HenryW

Plenty of money with the new owner but there are already suggestions that some payments haven't been made to other members of the team so far this. Hancock himself apparently has a separate contact with the owner rather than the club which gives him a guaranteed income regardless of matches ridden or points scored.

Bydgoszcz did announce some plans to run a meeting on the Sunday as a fundraiser for Tomek Gollob. I'm not sure whether this is still intended. http://www.pomorska.pl/sport/zuzel/a/asy-dla-golloba-mocne-nazwiska-gratka-dla-fanow,13057660/

I think they should be considering a change to teams of 4 plus 1 under 21 rider next year...maybe only have 4 Nations per meeting to keep the standard up! They could call it the World Cup or something like that. This was a terrible idea, badly implemented. It needs to be shelved after this year.

They've been doing a track grade every 4 heats and obviously decided that now wasn't the time to change. I can't believe they have the scores wrong, though!

The rules are certainly clear that priority doesn't go to all Polish leagues on all the Polish days. I wonder why they did such a poor job of making that clear in the calendar! To me it looks like section 2 of the clash of dates rule has maybe been written to be helpful to UK Championship teams. As you said, the multiple race nights makes it difficult to give priority anywhere. But in the scanario where no priority day exists, giving priority to the team that the rider has raced for more, it obviously favours a league with more meetings. For example, you would expect most clashes between Championship meetings and the Danish league matches on Fridays to go in favour of the Championship team.

Current FIM calendar with priority details can be found here: https://speedwayekstraliga.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-Amended-International-Speedway-League-Calendar-Updated25.05.2018.pdf

If you have a look at the FIM league calendar, the colour coding does suggest that all 3 Polish leagues have priority on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (except in the event of FIM meetings on Saturdays). The top 2 British leagues have priority on Monday and Thursday. I've not got a link to the calendar to hand just now but will add it if I remember.

You are correct. The Metro A line now has a stop at Petriny, which is just a 5 or 10 minute walk from the stadium.

I agree that the current format and point scoring system is the best they have had, as it ensures every race means something in the title chase. I should maybe clarify that I wasn't advocating a return to the old 24 rider format that they used to use, just pointing out that having those extra riders allowed more scope for form riders and fresh faces. For me, a system that allowed more riders to be involved would be good, but it would need some novel approach not to lose the good things we currently have, and would probably add too much expense, as mentioned by Mark.

Unfortunately this seems to have been caused by the UK being inconsistent with FIM rules. Dan was on gate 4 and used his UK yellow and black... the problem is that FIM meetings require solid yellow. A silly mistake but one I'm sure he won't make again now.

It's not your imagination. Smolinski is in the Falubaz squad this year but other than a couple of preseason training matches he hasn't been selected so far.

Personally, I think the problem is the limit of 15 riders in the series. During the years where they used the 24 rider knock out format it seemed like it worked better for having the right riders in and also allowed more fresh faces in. 15 permanent riders just feels too limiting...

Brits have helped each other in the past...I guess the question is maybe whether there was anyone there to make the riders aware of the situation. In his first big meeting I can imagine that Dan wouldn't have been thinking about permutations for others...Even Robert might not have been thinking of Dan as a threat given his performance up to then...they would have needed someone to have a word...and I'm guessing no-one did that. Edit - Just saw teaboys comment. Hopefully Lambert will get one of the wildcards. Harris, not so much.

Harsh on Dan. I'm not sure anyone expected anything much in this earthly venture out at this level. A silly mistake in his first one, so behind the others on track knowledge for his second and lost a point due to mechanical problems. He has done reasonably in his last 3, including beating Lambert This will surely have been good experience, but I'm still not convinced that he's ready to be thrown into the World Cup.

Not the best of starts for Dan Bewley, getting himself excluded for having the wrong helmet colour. Edit - Then an engine failure in his second race whilst in 3rd.

I'm sure that will help to get the fans on side

You have far more confidence in the current Monarchs team than I do as a Monarchs fan

Do you think we might struggle to qualify if we don't go for the absolute best around the NSS? Surely the best for Wrocław is what we should be picking, unless we plan to fake some injuries after the semi final.

From what Flightradar24 reports, the outbound flight (FR1664) was fine, it departed 11 minutes behind schedule and arrived in Riga 16 minutes ahead of schedule, so there wouldn't seem to have been any obvious clues there that there was a problem until it was too late.

From what has been said, I'm assuming he was taking the Riga flight to East Midlands Do you really think that getting a flight that is due to arrive in East Midlands at 13:25 for an evening meeting at Leicester is cutting it tight? He could have had a several hour delay amd still made it fine. It's just unfortunate that the flight had a huge delay.

The Ljubljana club posted an update on Facebook on Friday saying that Jan Pintar was breathing on his own again after being taken off of the ventillator. He was also being brought out of the induced coma that he had been put into. The full extent of his injuries still weren't known at that time. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1875153889196063&id=323342524377215 The news about the other rider is more complete. Patrik Buri posted that he had broken both his ankles and his left hand. He had some issues with his insurance company so couldn't get the full treatment needed in Austria but is now back home and being treated there. http://www.speedwaya-z.cz/?p=30131

Against what looks a weak ZG team this year, that's a very poor performance from Torun. They must be very frustrated with the performances of their "star" riders Doyle and Holder...Pretty pathetic scores from World Champions.

Wrocław is probably my favourite Polish City of the ones I have visited. It's a lovely place and great for a short break. Getting to the speedway from the Centre is very easy, as R&R has said. The only slight downside to the whole thing is that I'm not sure I've ever seen a truly great speedway meeting there. As for accomodation, it really depends what you are willing to pay. There are some nice hotels there from the major chains, and I have always stayed in one or other of those, but I'm sure there are some great apartments and budget hotels too.

Did they not end up with this format for the SEC itself because they were told they couldn't use the GP format? Having said that, I still don't understand why they use this format for qualifiers. Having semis and a final in a series is very different from a one off meeting. I think a straight 20 heats makes far more sense for a meeting like this.

That was probably the most enjoyable meeting that I have attended at the Dale in a long time. There was some great racing with Scott Nicholls in particular showing his class around the small track. He was a pleasure to watch. I hope we see him back up here much sooner than his last visit It's also worth noting how swiftly the meeting was run. IMO, this is how every meeting should be. Obviously there are times when incidents and accidents make that impossible, but this should be the aim. As for the Monarchs team, it's still looking a bit shaky but there are encouraging signs. Joel looked much better than the last time I saw him, although his style still looks very awkward. Erik had a bad night. He looked like he was maybe missing the heavier surface of the early meetings. Josh offered some great entertainment, but really needs to sort out his gating, and maybe also work on his inside line. If someone is already on the outside he doesn't seem to have an answer most times. Heat 14 was a good example of that, with a clearly slower rider in the way, and that was his team mate! All in all, a very entertaining night, though...and it's not often I've said that about my Armadale experience recently!