Rob B

Bonus point was looking questionable all meeting but Belle Vue won it in fantastic heat 15, great racing throughout with Oxford riders getting stuck in.

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Oxford website had Jake Muflord on Thursday

Only Birmingham not riding on Thursday

Belle Vue: Brady Kurtz, Norick Blodorn, Jaimon Lidsey, Ben Cook, Dan Bewley, Antti Voulas, Jake Mulford Oxford: Rohan Tungate, Erik Riss, Maciej Janowski, Charles Wright, Chris Harris, Ashton Boughen, Luke Killeen

It’s settling down now, at least riders can slide it into bends now

Because it was Chris Harris riding it like a grass track it’s so rough.

Bends 3/4 look very wet and bend 1 was dusty. Great weather, good crowd, so bad to have extended grading after 1 heat.

And remember what happened with Denmark in 2022, should have been in Esbjerg and due to the high costs involved to them and presumably low ticket sales they abandoned it and had to be moved to Vojens at very short notice and they had low crowds too.

In Denmark league they not allowed to drop tear offs now due to environmental laws. So the tear offs and threaded on that yellow wire so when they pull it off it is retained. Not sure if this means for the GP there all riders will have to have it?

He's probably looking at all the Mondays and Thursdays either team are riding. I've know BV are riding twice a week for next few weeks.

Presume Phil Morris must have called it with it being on TV. With both teams missing 2 riders suited them.

Looks like there was some rain this afternoon but it’s dry now till at least 9pm?

Jake Mulford? Original rising star last year till got injured

This is what happened with Belle Vue last week, different forecasts constantly changing, I thought they were suppose to be able to accurately predict now.

I’m sure was listed on Eurosport earlier in week. Now showing only on Discovery+ but Eurosport 2 are showing British Speedway and Speedway GP highlights for 2 hours!

It needs to be a 2 day event, maybe top 5 seeded straight to final and then the other 7 nations do race off on the Friday for last 2 places.

And where were those 12000 people going to come from, you could have made it free for the semi finals and still wouldn’t have had many there and people not going to travel from round the country and pay for hotel for 5 days. exacty the same with Wroclaw being empty last year, and Vojens the year before.

Cardiff has 74000 seats so they need to try get people in at lower price but it still will be quarter full. Yet how nobody comments on that every year. i suspect if BV held a GP the price would be somewhere in between.

They won’t have done, Mark Lemon admitted few weeks ago they will be making a loss but had to do it to prove can hold a GP.

Could this be a try out? Will struggle round Ipswich I would think.

Yeah I’m told now Kurtz was told would start meeting but could be replaced by Fricke if didn’t perform, but he did good so wasn’t replaced.

It was certainly sardine full at 2nd bend end, people were pushing past each other to get to toilets, beer etc, looked like stewards tried to do something about it but failed. You can sell 1200 in there most go to 2nd bend end as that’s the first entrance from entering stadium and in speedway most people prefer 1st/2nd bend to 3rd/4th bend (another issue with temp stand) so the 3rd bend end will look more sparse.

Anyone know what was issue with Max Fricke? He was there there and did the autograph session etc but then I gather before the meeting on TV they said Kurtz would take all his rides. Was he ill?

They will have lost a lot on ticket sales, but they took all the money from food & drink and car parks etc so who knows if they broke even or not.