False dawn

This started out as a serious thread. Well semi serious. But now it's descending into total silliness. I love it!

There was a time that we had both a team champonship and a pairs championship. One is not a substitute for the other. When we moved to the Speedway of Nations, it was mooted that it would alternate with the Team Championship, year on year.

To be clear, unlike several earlier answers, they will have to self isolate, but have an exception to take part in elite sport. As I read it, they can travel to the meeting, take part and then return home.

But the last time we ran such a competition apart from the WTC was the 1973 Daily Mirror International Tournament. The fixture diary was full in those days and we fitted it in. Only England had home fixtures. But the competition went down to a run off at Wembley in front of 41000 fan. For sure the world has moved on, but a test match series run on a league format sounds pretty attractive to me.

With a straight through pipe no doubt? Double bonus. Authentic smell and sound.

Anyway back to my original quaestion: If "the smell" was down to Castrol R, why do we still get it sometimes with riders using synthetic oils? And more to the point, can we reproduce it some way at home, to enhance the viewing experience of online/TV speedway? What I had in mind was something like this: Click here (a bit expensive in my view).

So why do they? Other racing engines don't (as far as I know) and nor does my car engine.

Thinking about sitting at home watching speedway on TV or an internet stream, I thought I'd see if there was any way of creating "that speedway smell" in my front room. I know this whole smell subject has been discussed before, but there are still aspects of this that I don't fully understand. The conventional wisdom talks a lot about Castrol R and sometimes total loss engines. As modern engines recirculate the oil and synthetic oils are universally (?) used, why is that sometimes we still get that smell at meetings? Also, why are engines designed to burn oil anyway? They are not two stroke, so burning oil is surely inefficient.

I thought I heard him say that and then thought, no, that can't be right. I have heard a rumour that now that Marek Cieslak has retired as the Polish team manager, MA have engaged him as an advisor. That's the end of Jack Holder's international career then.

I'm afraid it does. As stated earlier, the definition of Elite sport is where the participants make the majority of their income from that sport.

I guess the argument is that they would have had to give their U21 rider an outing in the planned 21 heats. As no one knew that the meeting would be called off after 14 heats, they could say that they planned a later inclusion of their reserves. Of course, they may just have been clever, predicting that there might be an early end to the meeting and not risking the use of their U21 rider until after heat 14.

In Adelaide

Bruno, what's the difference between October in Manchester next year and October in Manchester this year? You did buy a ticket for this year's event. Fromafar: I seem to recall that the initial refund period does run till the end October. But there is to be another 30 day refund period once the rearranged date is announced.

But that's not what happened. The SON finals are designed to run over 42 heats plus a semi final and a final. So 14 heats does not in any way represent 50% of "the meeting". Actually it's less than a third. So we are left with an empty sense of being short changed. And that's before we even consider the quality of racing (for the most part) on such a wet circuit. Oh, and when did rain make a circuit bumpy? I can accept that the surface might become uneven following some racing. But those bumps were there from the start of the "practice session".

That is the norm. The diary just got blown apart this year.

The best thing about this analysis is that it tries to show that a fairer race formula may be possible. The only remaining problems are the number of variables and the sample size. Simple then. Well no, of course not. But whatever changes we may make will need to be tested over many meetings, possibly several years, to determine if the new system is effective / fairer.

Actually Fd, its four. Edit: And that's another sign of age, talking to yourself!

I didn't know that helmet colours were given out by the hosting track. Jumping forward a few years. I wonder how many green helmets were bought during those silly days when the white helmet colour was dropped in the UK?

During a search for something else speedway related, I tripped over this. As a bit of a nerd and having studied the stats on starting gates (wins and points scored) I was interested to see that someone has tried to apply some science to this subject. Oh well, as I write this, I realise I might be the only other person in the world interested enough to even read this article Click here

And can you guys confirm it was the 1976 Grand Prix Final at White City?

Oh dear. They say when you can remember old memories better than recent ones, it really is the first sign of old age (or worse). Thanks for the reference to the Grand Prix Final. It seems neither brother got the hemet colour right. It may have been the Skol Masters my brother had in mind. There were two qualifiers / semis at Poole and Sheffield before the final at Birmungham (all in 1977). They also sponsored the BLRC in 1975. Still, I wish I could get a definitive reference to the helmet colour incident

Following a conversation with my brother about the number of this weekend's SON team managers who have ridden for the Bees (it's three btw) we got onto Marek Cieslak's British racing history. For the record he rode for White City in 1977-8. Talk of White City took us to Bruce Penhall's "less than finest hour" at the 1982 Overseas Final when he allowed 3 of his fellow Americans to beat him. So are you with me so far? This is like an episode of Connections. So at this point in the conversation I think we were both trying to dig out the most obscure memories. Thinking it was White City I moved onto the time that Ole Olsen's helmet colour came adrift and ended up tangled in his rear wheel. Now I can't find online any reference to this occurence. I thought it was in the Grand Prix series (not the WC, a series held in Britain sponsored by the Daily Mirror). But bro thinks it was another individual series sponsored by a brewery (Skol?). We also differ on the helmet cover colour. I think it was white but bro thinks it was red. I know someone will know the details.....

Well let's unpick that shall we? You can't win the team pursuit in cycing without having the winner. Don't know about the biathon. Running one is good in my book. F1 is not decided by the last race of the year. The point is, speedway in the SON does it different. The whole championship is decided by one race. Winning the race and having the last is a 3 all to anyone with half an eye. By intuition, you can't lose the championship by winning the final. Whatever the scoring system, the two best teams should arrive at the final. Whatever happens from there onwards should at least appear to be fair. To be honest, I'd sign up to the top scoring team, without a final, being the winner. You can have any race scores you like then.

How about this? In February I'll give you a sum of money equivalent to 3 quarters of the season's meetings. This gives me a card which grants me contactless entry. Once my credit runs out, you charge me for each further use of my card. Okay, the promotion don't get any additional money, but they do get most of it earlier.

I see what you mean. But don't you think that the results of a competition such as the World Championship or the SON should make sense in retrospect? In particular, don't you think the uninitiated should easily make sense of such results?