Khabiboulin

Six hours in bank holiday traffic for nothing

Full scorecard (including your missing heat time, Derek) available here: http://eliteeaglescouk.ipage.com/pdf/eaglets-lakeside.pdf

Scorecard available here: http://eliteeaglescouk.ipage.com/pdf/2012-British-Youth-R4.pdf

Dekker, I don't think I can quote on my phone. But my point was that a lot of meetings are called off having had much less bad weather than Berwick had. So if assume covers on those tracks would give a slightly better end result than at Berwick on Saturday, then yes, I do think it's worth it. Also, a bit more practice and experience with covers would probably have given a better track on Saturday too. It did look like the tractors made the bends a bit worse to start with so I'm sure a bit more experience would help with preparing a track in those conditions. The racing wasn't great but there were a few ok races towards the end.

We drove up from Kent so I too am grateful to the track staff. A nice venue, I enjoyed it. Berwick have proved that covering tracks can work in this country. They had about the worst conditions possible and got the meeting on which suggests to me that at least half of current rain-offs could be saved.

But 2-minute exclusions don't count towards averages whether the rider is (or can be) replaced or not. I think in that case it is 3 from 1 although his team will only have had 28 rides that count towards averages that night. Slightly odd maybe but I think that's the right way - the same as if there are three-rider races because of injuries.

Three 2-minute exclusions when he didn't turn up? That's interesting, although in my book I wouldn't count that as a meeting because he didn't actually appear on track (or even in the pits, presumably!) Any ideas when the SCB (not you!) might finally decide to replace the 2011 rules on their website with 2012 ones?

If a rider takes part in a meeting but officially takes no rides, what happens? The scenario I mean is when a rider is injured in his first ride (which is stopped and re-run), he is not excluded but is unable to take any further part in the meeting. In normal record keeping, this would go down as the slightly odd (but in my opinion, totally correct) 1 meeting, 0 rides. Normally that has no impact on averages. But under these rolling averages where only the last 28 or 38 meetings count, it matters. The scenario happened to Joonas Kylmakorpi this season and it appears the BSPA have completely discounted his appearance in that meeting which I think is the wrong thing to do. In many ways, I quite like the rolling averages, but (as well as the above scenario) I don't like the way that meetings from so long ago can still count. When very, very few riders ride every meeting in a season, they are very likely to have meetings from 2 seasons ago counting - that doesn't seem right really. The rider who is quite cleaely the best rider in the Elite League is still getting his average reduced by his less impressive 2010 form - is that right? Is it really relevant now? And what I find even more silly is that now the PL has a different number of meetings from last year, every single rider is guaranteed to have very old meetings counting.

Thanks Bryn - appreciated. Oh, and I meant to ask, did Slick Nick Laurence recover his stolen equipment?

Do you have heat details, Derek? I was at the meeting but not in time for the "first half". It's disappointing Arena put these meetings on as first halves and not second halves; I'm not sure why - they don't have a curfew, do they?

Thanks Dave. But does that mean 2009 (and earlier) meetings count where necessary, even though they didn't last year? Your wording seems to suggest so. It obviously wouldn't affect many riders, but would, for example, Renat Gafurov use his last 4 meetings for Swindon to go with his 24 for Poole? If so, it seems strange given that didn't apply similarly last year. But if not, it makes the start-2010 cut-off incredibly arbitrary. I quite like the idea of rolling averages but I think once a season is complete, it should only be that season's meetings that count for a current average (a rider could still have an average based purely on an earlier season if he hadn't ridden enough meetings in that last season). So 500cc - I agree with you. What Dave appears to be saying is the current system seems to over-benefit riders on an upward curve (e.g. Darcy Ward, who is clearly one of the world's best riders, but gets his average reduced by results from two years ago) and over-penalise riders on a downward curve. Oh and one more thought - I thought the 28 and 38 were based on "whole" seasons. But next year the PL will have 26 league meetings plus 10 "early-season competition" meetings, excluding later rounds, cup, play-offs etc which shouldn't count. So will they still use 38?

It was "Young Australia", not Australia Under-23, primarily, I think, so that Woodward could ride. But it also allowed 30-year old McGowan to race. 29-year old Allen was a late replacement for the ill Woffinden. Having said that, Boxall is also 25 I think, and he was named in the original line-up, so it should really have been Young Great Britain too. Nelson rather than Tyson Nelson is one of Len Silver's weird gimmicks, like Karlis instead of Karlis Ezergailis. Not really sure why on earth he thinks it adds anything though. http://eliteeaglescouk.ipage.com/pdf/2011-gb-aus.pdf

Congratulations to Henry Atkins on winning the inaugural title. Here's the scorecard on the unofficial Eastbourne site: http://eliteeaglescouk.ipage.com/pdf/125cc-british.pdf

If you look just ten post above yours I have done exactly that. I suggested a very simple method based on THE recognised heat format for a pairs meeting: 7 pairs, 21 heats, each pair has 6 rides, 1 against every other pair. You just have two semi-finals using this format (at separate meetings) and use these to determine the 7 finalists.

Pairs meetings are traditionally 7 pairs, 21 heats, so why not have two semi-finals using the traditional meeting format, top three from each qualify plus highest scoring 4th placed team.