THE DEAN MACHINE

think you need to spend a bit more time in Poland mate, they have some amazing tracks and stadiums but they have some real dumps too

they are not ,they bikes were the best around 20 years ago , they were the safest and easiest to ride and pretty much the same speed as todays bikes, difference being they didn't have problem getting round any track, but riders follow suit and go with whatever someone else uses, there is a product that has been made but no one is using it yet, if it does I gaurentee some will be killed with it, greg hancock saw it and said he couldn't use it as it doesn't suit how he rides but other lesser riders will see it a progress cause it in theory makes the job a little less work but it also takes away the little throttle control they have now , its a disaster waiting to happen

investing in what?,longer vans

our product only differs because we have killed the team concept, we don't have a team to support anymore only in name , I used to be a wolves fan, who never missed a match, I have been twice this year because I cant relate to a team who has 5of the 7 riders riding for another team, in Poland your team is your team not someone elses team

the bikes are not fit for the purpose the tracks are the same as they have always been and even if you were right 90% of the tracks cant be changed

Poland have structure and they gear their leagues to the fan, when you go to polish league speedway you become part of the family of what ever team your at, as I said earlier I have been to some pretty poor polish meetings but the fan experience made it great

you keep referring to your restaurant, so how do you attract me to your restaurant as im the type of person who only eats cause I have to, I don't get all that celebrity food bollox and food is just that food so how would you get me into your restaurant because your idea is to show me the food is great, the best but I couldn't care less cause food isn't my thing , but if all my friends were going to your place and it looked fun to do then I would go

the team concept works extremely well in Poland for speedway and in pretty much every other team sport in Britain, until that changes I am completely right, the concept works ,it is a team sport

I sort of class myself as the old guard but im trying to cut costs for the riders because come next season and they have their pay halved they will be moaning like hell , its not that I don't want them to have it, I couldn't really care less what they spend but being an ex rider I want to help them

but this goes back to my old argument that speedway isn't a motorsport, it never has been, it a team sport on motorbikes , that's been its appeal since day one, its not like any other motorsport, ( the twitter poll seems to agree with me )we have never appealed to dirt or road track fans on mass,i always think of my mrs as the typical fan, she has been to speedway all her life yet she couldn't tell you the difference from a jawa to a gm or a weslake to a jap and we own all of the above, to her its a bike and that is typical to the majority of speedway fans including the ones that have left the sport, what she can identify with is the riders and her team. to address the racing you need to address the bikes and you disagreed with that but changing tracks will do nothing there will still be bad meetings even on the best tracks that is the nature of the sport

for the first timer it is all about the experience they feel, a female couldn't give two hoots about a pass in every race and the best meeting of the season, but if she is with mates and they are having a blast and everyone around them is too it will give them a good experience, I hate football with a passion but I got invited to stoke v man utd last season, I found being in the middle of the fans fascinating, I couldn't even tell you the score as I didn't really care much for the match but it was an enjoyable experience soley because of the passion of the fans from both sides, and that's what speedway is about, speedway has lost a couple of major things, the team ethic and the social side, it had both back in the day and both brought the enjoyment to the fan experience,i had friends that used to go to speedway just to pull women as the bar was full of them, the racing is no worse today than it was in the 60s 70s 80s 90s ,it has good days and has bad, good tracks and bad tracks always has always will, the racing can always be better but we need to get the public to attend first ,we need to address cost to the public,we need to make them feel like they are getting a bargain and that its the place to be seen ,then the old saying" put a pile of dog poo in a city street people will walk past it, get 30 people to stand round the same poo and other people will stop to have a look" "a crowd attracts a crowd attracts a crowd and so on " we all want good racing on good tracks but as I said most newcomers especially women don't care for motorcycle racing of any kind as good as it can be but they do care for having a good time with their friends and a crowd going nuts for their team is very infectious

Where are cardiff getting the shale from ? I keep reading the shale the tracks are buying is rubbish and the meeting I saw at wolves Monday pretty much proved it so where are cardiff getting it from and if it’s the right stuff why are british tracks not getting it from the same place

Ive started a poll on twitter so see how fans view speedway ,as a team sport on bikes like football rugby etc or a motorsport for competitors like MotoGP, motox etc m, feel free to vote @deanfelton1

Because there are not enough available dates at wolves , they had to ride some at brum last year just to complete their fixtures , your just one fan not a crowd, I drive 400 miles a day and I think nothing of it but some of my friends think I’m mad as anyrhingvover 30 miles is a night out, for what’s it’s worth I don’t think there should be any teams running from another track

Cradley does work , their crowds have been on par with many top teams, including their hosts they still get more than some teams in the championship even though they are not in the league and it was not too bad at stoke ,,their crowds were not too bad for a track 50 miles away ,Coventry doesn’t because it’s quite far away and many don’t trust Horton or like him

isn't it strange how 15 years+ ago riders could make ends meet just riding for one team and they were on a lot less money than they are today, so whats changed? the cost of the engines,tuning /servicing or whatever you want to call it has rocketed pretty much doubled and for what ?1mph , many say the racing is worse but it certainly hasn't got better as much as I have sympathy with the riders, life is tough, there has been enough time to see the end coming and to make the bikes cost less to help themselves but riders are not interested, they are happy pouring money out to external sources to have a product which is no better than it was 25 years ago but the answer from acu house will be to put £2 on admission and make all riders double up even more, so as I see it after listening to some on here is to scrap team racing altogether and make it a competitors sport where riders pay to race and earn big prize money and the riders can ride as much as their hearts desire, then the tracks will make money so they can make them bigger and have better racing and we can all just remember team speedway as an outdated concept that nobody really cared about so we signed it off to the history books.

But you said all tracks should be like belle vue and when that was on the tv the racing was great and yet belle vue is on its arse , wolves crowds are bigger than belle vue yet BV has better racing

Before a new fan or even an ex fan gets to see the track or it’s racing we need to get them to the turnstiles, as I said priority’s

There are a few but read all my posts from the last year I have pretty much covered every angle from bikes, riders, fans, cost and more , I have done pretty much the sport from all angles and now as a fan again I know what I want and I’m asking other fans and ex ones what they want from speedway and my posts reflect the answers I get

More non fans would turn up to see 20 bad crashes on a crap track than 15 brilliant races on a perfect track, making a track perfect with perfect racing will do nothing to attract new fans

And that’s cool and your perspective is not wrong but I think it’s in the minority riders aside

Growing up I was a wolves fan and that’s all that mattered, as a rider I became that team I rode and they became my fans, that’s how team sport works no matter if it Britain poland or Jamaica,speedway football or hockey, speedway is a team sport and that’s what matters to fans, always has

It flys in football, yes better racing will help but it’s not a prority, it won’t get new fans to come, I do ask people with knowledge , it’s ptetty much how I spend my speedway meetings these days , I still have friends in high places and I’m constantly asking them, running ideas by them, some of my posts are not my ideas but that of well respected members of the speedway community, not sure if you saw my Twitter spat over doubling up with Steve worral last year? But the backing I had for that huge and from well respected people, I don’t have all the answers and I try to base my ideas/thoughts on the fan perspective . To a point it doesn’t matter what me or you think it matters what the people who don’t go to speedway think

That is exactly what we need to do , the poles follow their teams , it’s all about their teams, the racing is secondary, when they put on individual meetings or anything other than a team meetings the crowd drops alarmingly even with top riders because all that matters is their team, we had that and bit by bit diluted it to the point now where there is barely any teams , it is great to have loads of passing on a good track but first we need to get the fans in and we won’t do that by making the entry into the bends wider

Yes but they physically are different engines as it’s not worth having them changed every weekend and then changed back so they have different engines