SPEEDY69

Don't forget these are TEAM meetings, the priority for any of the Cov riders is that the team wins - they had achieved that before heat 15. Individual match ups do not matter, the team score does.

We've done the GP qualifying debate on here so many times. It will be interesting to see if Hampel gets a wildcard for next year as he failed to get through the qualifiers.

My mistake, it was the week before.

Who do you consider to be "the elite" As far as I remember one example was that he beat Leigh Adams twice at Swindon earlier this year and he used to beat Crump at B Vue, regularly defeated Hancock etc, not sure about NP but as they are in the top 5 in the GPs I'm not quite sure what you are meaning. As for Schumi's example from Sweden I believe he scored a maximum the previous week, when the great NP only got 9, very poor. The point is to use these examples is ridiculous. He is one of the most entertaining riders in the GPs and I much prefer that to a gate and go merchant and would have him in my BEL team over any other rider. Not sure why certain people are so concerned with him on this forum?

I agree, which leaves Hampel vulnerable as he went throught the qualifiers but failed to get through. If he then gets seeded because he misses a couple of GPs what does that say about the qualifying system - pointless???

I think Nicki is still a bit annoyed with Hans who was excluded a couple of weeks ago in Sweden for taking Nicki off.

Excellent performance from Scott in the Prague GP on a challenging track that put many riders off. Well done.

It seemed he was a bad loser, whining about the use of the reserve and also saying his bike had a problem - it could have just been that he was beaten fair and square by two riders in the final heat!! As for the use of the reserve, everybody knows Walasek, Holder & Kennett weren't injured but even so there was no doubting that the Poles were the best team. I doubt they'd have won outside of Poland but competing in your home country(Norwegians excepted) seems to give you a lift.

It seems there are a lot of things going on to help some of the more seriously injured riders and they are covered in the injured riders section.

It's in this weeks Speedway Star, but I don't know if there was anything in there about how to donate and don't have my copy to hand.

An even better gesture is that Steve Johnston is cycling about 170 miles in aid of Garry Stead. This involves quite a lot of his time, is physically demanding and outside of his job. Let's hope all these events get support.

I thought Jonsson was 2nd at the time Lindback fell off, so would have been through anyway? (Might be wrong though) All the same, had to smile about the Nicki description!

There is no way that Jonsson "took out Hans". As was said in the Sky studio, if you look at the footage it is clear to see that Hans was very keen on turning left out of the bend to try and prevent Jonsson coming through - this is something he is renowned for but it doesn't work when the rider is already alongside!

Scott has always considered his riding in England to be his priority over other leagues so I don't read too much into those figures - look at Joonas D's average in the UK compared to Sweden as one the other way round.

I think he tried Brian Andersen either last year or the year before. I don't think the engine tuning is so much an issue but more the actual setup of the bike on raceday and changing things in reaction to track changes. Someone like Andersen could help in this regard - however Lee R started making major changes when his results weren't as he liked and too much of that can set you going backwards!

It's quite clear to me that Scott hasn't had his bike set up correctly in the GPs so far - the best was in Wroclaw. You can see from his progress down the straights that his bike is slower than nearly all the others. This will be even more frustrating for him than for his fans. The switch to GMs over the winter will take a bit of time to get used to but his pit crew haven't got it right yet - there is certainly no lack of talent/ability/bottle in the rider himself. He will have to do the GP qualifiers this year I think if he wants to maintain his GP place for next season, unless he can pick up serious points in the next few GPs. He does tend to do quite well on the smaller tracks, where the bike setup for top speed is less critical so I will be keeping my fingers crossed that he can.

It's quite clear to me that Scott hasn't had his bike set up correctly in the GPs so far - the best was in Wroclaw. You can see from his progress down the straights that his bike is slower than nearly all the others. This will be even more frustrating for him than for his fans. The switch to GMs over the winter will take a bit of time to get used to but his pit crew haven't got it right yet - there is certainly no lack of talent/ability/bottle in the rider himself. He will have to do the GP qualifiers this year I think if he wants to maintain his GP place for next season, unless he can pick up serious points in the next few GPs. He does tend to do quite well on the smaller tracks, where the bike setup for top speed is less critical so I will be keeping my fingers crossed that he can.

And therein lies the misoconception. Scott never said he wouldn't carry on, he said if he didn't make the top 8 then he didn't deserve to be automatically in. However, when offered a wildcard he accepted - he never begged for a wildcard, ro even asked for one, that decision was made by the GP organisers.

Think that both event 1 & 2 will be tough. Think Poland will need the race off to get through, but on home soil should win again but it all depends upon the state of the track!

To me all the riders have failed, except the ones who have won the world title - that is what they are all competing for and some have failed for several years. However for me it is exciting racing (and teamwork at club level) that I watch speedway for - I couldn't really care less who has a higher average than who, who gates better than who etc. (gating and remaining in that position for the rest of the race is generally extremely boring to watch). I will continue to support the Cardiff GP because at present it is the best supported of the series and British speedway needs this accolade/support for its international standing. I can watch all the others on TV but the atmosphere over the whole weekend is great and it's only a few hours driving to get there. The racing also provides plenty of incidents/talking points and the track ensures that riders cannot just blast round smoothly at full throttle, as you can on some of the tracks.

Moving the start time would have little effect in my opinion. Many people will stil look to stay over, so they can have a drink and a GP 'weekend'. The next day is Sunday so if you like travelling there and back you will have the pleasure of empty roads once you clear Cardiff for the return journey and only a small number of people work on the Sunday. I like the timing as we don't have to rise too early on the Saturday to get there, can soak up the atmosphere in the city beforehand and travel back on the Sunday. It will always be quite expensive whenever it's held but the Hotel situation is deplorable as they rip-off people because they know they can get away with inflammatory prices. The number of block booked rooms by the organiser/sponsors doesn't help the paying fans at all!

Having a quick look at last years scores, TG scored 40 points across 7 meetings and 54 points in 3 meetings. BP scored 64 pts across 9 meetings and 18 in 1. SN scored 63 pts across 8 meetings and 20 in 1. Under the new scoring system, the final points table should reflect much more closely the riders' position according to their average score, in the same way that league averages rank riders now. This show that some significant changes could occur but I stand by my point that it rewards riders who score well across the whole series in each and every race. This is how the league averages are worked out (not just on heat 15 results for example).

He may well be a legend and quality racer but my point was that all that really matters is the World Championship title and the same could be said for all those riders that have had many many opportunities to win it but have failed. I used it to illustrate that perhaps under the new system we may see a change in riders who qualify for next season by rights.

The new system does have its merits. All the GPs simply make up what is the World Championship and under the old system, doing well in just two meetings was pretty much enough to guarantee qualification for the next year (personally I think only the World Champ should automatically, but that's another issue). The new system, whilst seemingly unjust in potentially awarding more points for someone who does not reach the main final than someone who does, it does recognise all the points scored on the track. i.e. under the old system someone could get 25 points but only win one race all evening and someone else could win 6 races and only get 16 points. Another benefit from this system is that serial failures (to use a Sub expression) such as Gollob, may not do as well in that by simply doing well in a couple of GPs will not affect the overall scorechart as significantly as it does now. I am prepared to keep an open mind and wait and see what actually happens - it would interesting if a comparison from previous seasons could be made using this years points system.

We seem to have the same debate every year about who deserves and who doesn't deserve to be in the GPs. It's a commercial product and a commercial decision who is included. Those riders in the top eight are not necessarily the top eight riders in the world - a couple of finals and you're in pretty much, even if you ride like a novice in the other rounds (see TG for this). The old world finals were also flawed, with places allocated by nation so nothing's changed really. My priority is team racing in Britain, individual events have always held less appeal.