Humphrey Appleby

Looking at the SCB website, they look to be using the MyLaps TR2 car/bike transponder which is generally reliable and widely used in motorsport. However, they appear to advise to mount them horizontally on the handlebars when in fact they should mounted in an upright orientation as the magnetic wave travels downwards. The transponders are also detected by a wiring loop in the track, which is normally no more than 2 or 3 cms under the surface. I'd guess with dirt tracks you need to put them a fair bit deeper as the top surface will gradually wear or be graded away over the course of a meeting and expose the loop (which will then get caught on something). For motocross it's recommended to put them in a plastic pipe about a 30 cms down, but the maximum recommended range of a MyLaps bike transponder is about 1.2 metres, so if the transponder is not pointed in an optimal position, then I'd imagine this will be beyond the limit of the transponder range and why they're not working reliably. It's a problem that should be very easy to identify as the timekeeping system should record the number of transponder hits as it crosses the timing loop in the track. If you're seeing little or no hits, then either the transponders are 1) badly positioned or 2) low on charge (or more rarely faulty), 3) there's a break somewhere in the timing loop, 4) excessive noise on the loop (often due to poor shielding), or 5) the timing loop is simply too far below the surface. My money would be on a combination of 1) and 5).

A 'Football World Championship' was also intermittently held between the English and Scottish FA Cup winners and latterly the league champions between 1876 and 1904. Although I'm not a fan of retrospectively changing the status of something that wasn't recognised as such at the time, the fact is this happened with the early modern Olympics and with first class and particularly test matches in cricket. The first 'Ashes' were nothing of the sort, nor even billed as test matches at the time AFAIK.

And one that went out in the second week after a baking task. Sums up speedway somehow...

I lived for a while near Davies Park - which still exists as a Rugby League ground. I had no idea that it had staged speedway.

Not sure what the kart track has to do with the speedway stadium - different stadiums with different leaseholders aren't they? Was racing at the kart track last year so was able to take a look at the speedway track. The stadium itself still seems to be quite good condition, but the track seems to have been buried under tons of soil that has been dumped there. It's possible it may be relatively intact underneath if it were all dug out - difficult to tell.

That's the fakeness of television for you. I think it's clear from the 'You're Fired' show that most of them are nothing like the caricatures they're put up to be, and they have to play up to certain expectations to have a chance of getting on the show. Of course, a few do have over-inflated opinions of their ability, but I suspect a fair bit of scripting goes on, plus the pressure of time rarely shows any of them in the best light. Although I still watch it, the Apprentice has long since descended into reality entertainment rather than any serious attempt to find a business partner, if it ever was that in the first place.

Yes, had a few chats in the old email forums. Sad news.

Ah yes, the old 'bahnrekord' or whatever it was called...

Well, it actually always was about sprints - namely a given number of very short races that form a meeting. What it's never been about is endurance races (apart from occasional 16-lap gimmicks) or timed qualifying.

It's all a bit silly isn't it? The SGP already ran sprint races - 23 of them in fact. This is quite aside from the fact that track conditions are going to change between qualifying sessions, so the session you're drawn in is going to influence the selection order for those that don't qualify for the 'sprint race'. Regardless of what's being claimed, it's not going to be the same for everyone. Then there's the 'sprint race' itself. What happens if those four riders wipe each other out before the GP starts? In MotoGP you've got far more riders in a race and you can't get them all on the front grid, so timed qualifying is one of the fairer approaches to lining them up, especially as you can put all the riders in one session where the conditions will be the same for everyone. Speedway - for precisely the reasons it takes place on a much smaller track and only has a small number of riders in each race as a result, has evolved a multi-race all-out sprint format. If you really wanted to add some interest to practice, add some extra wildcards and have them race-off for a couple of places in the GP proper.

I went and thought it was pretty good meeting. Track looked decently prepared and they got through 44 heats (including support) in under 3.5 hours even with grading. Not sure what expectations are these days at the Australian Championships, but seemed to be a fair crowd there. Sam Ermolenko and David Tapp on commentary, although David Tapp kept committing the cardinal sin of yabbering on rather than giving us the race results...

They did. The Winternapolis I think it was called. I went and still have the programme somewhere, although the racing wasn't the best from memory. I think the track was quite damp and a lot of straw had been used to try to soak up the water and make it rideable.

Who indeed cares where they hold their corporate jolly at their own expense? The formal business side of things probably more efficiently be held in a conference room somewhere in the Midlands, but a lot of the actual dealings get done in the bar at these sorts of things.

Don't think there should be any debate. If you deliberately set-out to injure someone, whether the street or a sports arena, you should be subject to the full force of the law. Of course there have to be some exceptions like boxing and some martial arts where that's the point of the sport, and of course there's some sports with grey areas like ice hockey where thinly disguised violence is part of the game. But perhaps it's time for ice hockey to reconsider what sort of sport it wants to be.

That's why he's been charged with manslaughter rather than murder. I haven't seen the video so not going to make any judgment on the case, but if the intention is to intentionally injure someone and they die as a result, then that is manslaughter.

And of course where arson is proved, it's always 'kids' who've broken in to burn the place down...

I was even including an interval in the 2 hours! You could run 20 heats in 1.5 hours if the will was there.

Running 4TTs would mean promoters would only have income from 1 home meeting in 4, there would be more riders to pay, and as you say more heats. No matter how many riders you have in a team, someone will get injured and you'll still have to replace them somehow, except that one rider will now represent 25% of your lineup rather than 14% of it, so the relatively impact will be greater on your team. On another note, if speedway can't run 20 heats in under 2 hours, turn it really sums up what's wrong with the sport.

Of course there's a conundrum in that promoters want - indeed need - their own tracks to be successful, but at the same time there's a need for the sport as whole to make as many teams as possible competitive whilst keeping down cost.. Anything run along such lines is invariably going involves squabbles and unholy compromises.

I'm sure with a bit of materials research it should be possible to come up with a more rain resistant surface. After all, didn't we hear that the GP shale stored in a scientifically designed pyramid shape? LOL However, there's far more money in cricket and despite advances in drainage and super soppers, rain still stops play. I still think the best solution would be to built some sort of cantilevered canopy over the track. Could be a partial roof like you get over Dutch speed skating circuits, or some lightweight tent sort of structure.

Well yes lower rpm in principle would contribute to improved reliability, but then riders will complain about a lack of power to spin the wheel etc... I've never ridden speedway though, so can't really comment on the merits of this approach. However... Sealed engines would contribute little of nothing to the problem unless you had a centrally maintained pool of engines at arm's length from the riders. Firstly you're reliant on the honesty of engine tuners when many will have working relationships with particular riders. Okay, you can still unseal an engine to inspect it, but then why do you need to seal it? The next issue is that even if you mandate stock parts, all that will happen is tuners buying up multiple examples to find the best bits to put in their engines. In the world of karting, I can say with an absolute fact that it was cheaper to run in unsealed engine classes than sealed classes, although I would completely agree that the lower revving engines with rev limiters had significantly longer service intervals. I think another question is why riders have to basically replace a significant part of the internals of a speedway engine out of the factory? Presumably this is because the tolerances and quality control leaves something to be desired, but speedway engines are specially built for the purpose and are hardly mass produced. Would have thought if it wasn't necessary to use custom replacements for half the engine, that would also represent a saving?

It's a good documentary, but I think you'd have to put similar effort into maintaining any sort of racing engine. I'd guess where you could save costs is insisting on stock parts rather than the custom-made bits (e.g. cam shaft) which I assume are expensive to make, but these are never made equal and you'd end-up buying multiple parts to select the best ones anyway. I'd guess you could also try make the engines run longer before needing maintenance which would save a bit on the 5-8 hours manpower each time, but realistically unless you can make an engine last a full season, you're probably only going to be saving GBP 2-3k on the actual labour over a season, which is probably relatively insignificant for a professional rider.

Went karting at the track next door to the Rye House stadium a couple of months ago. The stadium still looked in fairly good condition (to some extent better than it originally did back in the day ), although huge piles of earth had been dumped all over the track and I think part of the terracing as well.

I'm guessing that averages are normalised to 4 rides as historically that was the number of rides each rider was programmed for (with some exceptions for reserves etc...). Therefore it could be easily understood by the layman as the average contribution a rider made to every match. Even with the later advent of tactical subs and rider replacement, it still makes sense as those are occasional rides that don't happen every meeting. Then nominated heats came along (although I think they were used by some heat formats in the distant past) which distorts the calculation as not only are some riders contributing more actual points on a regular basis, but the nominated ride will generally be harder as it usually involves the best riders of the night. Indeed, I think the averages of the top riders dropped after the nominated heat was introduced on a regular basis in 1988, although that also coincided with fixed gate positions which would also be a reason. I suppose you could add a factor to points scored in the nominated heat to reflect the tougher ride, just as you could add a reducing factor to the reserves race for example to reflect the fact it's a 'easier' ride. But then it further removes the resultant CMA even further from the actual reality of how many points a rider is scoring. In the modern world, I do think it would make more sense to base averages on points-per-ride, but I guess CMAs are traditional and everyone knows the difference between a 10 point rider, 6 point rider, and 3 points rider etc... It would just end-up confusing everyone. Getting back to rolling averages, I think they're complete nonsense although I understand the reasoning which was to remove the early season distortion/potential manipulation when riders have only taken a handful of rides when being issued with a new CMA. However, taking the last x number of meetings really bears little relation to a rider's performance during a whole season, and even more so when the rolling period spans more than one season. A factored CMA would be a better approach where a rider's average at the start of the season (or assessed average) forms part of the CMA, but becomes less of a component as the season progresses. By the end of the season, their CMA would (likely) be their actual average for the season and would also be their starting average for the following season. This way the CMA would always be based on a season's worth of data.

Methanol is principle a renewable and clean fuel, but it still produces some CO2 and nitrous oxide. The amount of methanol burned is probably also tiny in comparison to getting the riders and spectators to meetings, although as crowds have declined, arguably the more environmental the sport has become... Speedway should really be thinking about going down the route of electric engines, to which it should be well suited as its short sprints. Okay, you'll need to charge the batteries, but electricity is not all fossil fuel produced. Electric speedway also wouldn't need on-demand power. Tracks could install a wind turbine and/or solar panels and charge up the batteries over the course of the week between meetings.