Somerset V Belle Vue 2/6/17

[Gresham]

If Tunny can regain his last years form he would be ideal for the Aces especially with the average he'll be on !!!

Form or Engines? We all saw what he can do when he brought his best engines back from abroad at Belle Vue.

 

That's the problem with some of these 'middle order' type riders...they get rides abroad and don't have the finances up front to get all the necessary machinery needed to be successful at all their Clubs.

 

They take the best engines to the Clubs that pay the most.

 

Can be said of a lot of riders.

[Najjer]

For anyone that wasn't there...there was absolutely nothing wrong with the track last night. It was damp...not wet. There were no puddles, it wasn't slick or slippery...in fact it was really grippy. Riders were charging into the bends, no one fell, riders made passes on the outside, there was more than one riding line. Even the times were fast.

 

The only difference to a 'dry' meeting, was that the shale that came up off the track, stuck, as it was damp and not bone dry dust. This made getting filled in more of a possibility. Hence you come prepared and have tear offs or mud visor roll strips.

 

Can't believe Mark Lemmon in the after night interviews, said that he felt disappointed in the Riders being asked to ride by the ref as it put their safety in jeopardy.

Seriously?

 

It seems some good riders need perfectly dry conditions to race. The Great riders can ride in all conditions.

Perfect summary that. Lemo has always come across as a wet weekend and his comment sums up what's wrong in part with speedway. The referee got a lot wrong last night, but telling the riders to get on with it and pushing the meeting through certainly wasn't one of them! Fair play to him for that.

[womble53]

All our boys wanted was a 30 min delay to work on track and give it chance to stop raining. But the ref wanted to rush it through. And not just till heat 10 but heat 15. So fair play for giving us fans our monies worth in a sense.

 

Think you might have to ask your team manager about that one, as far as I know, it was he, on the phone to the referee after Heat 8, who insisted to the referee that if it got to Heat 10, then it should go all the way. As many have already said, up to that point the track was not unraceable, and times had been relatively quick. In fact it did stop raining after Heat 10. So you had Mark Lemon after heat 8 insisting it should go to the end and the team captain one heat later throwing his toys out of the pram & ripping the phone of the wall because he felt it shouldn't. Confusing or what?

 

 

Sounds like the weather spoilt this a bit?

The wet conditions didn't seem to suit Cook who scored nearly 3x what he scored last night when guesting for kl, that would have made all the difference.

 

 

 

Neither the weather nor the conditions seemed to bother Jake Allen, Charles Wright, Richard Lawson, Kenneth Bjerre, Max Fricke or Steve Worrall, all of whom raced hard and fast in the conditions, made passes both inside and outside, and didn't appear to hold back in anyway at all. Think that tells you everything you need to know about the matter

Edited June 3, 2017 by womble53

[womble53]

Check out the video of Heat 14 last night and take a look at Jake Allen's ride, think it blows any arguments about the track being unraceable right out of the water, if you'll excuse the pun

 

https://youtu.be/Kr3yqru72QY

[Bagpuss]

Awful ride by Sedgemen.

[hyderd]

From someone who wasn't there and basing my post purely on heat 14, Somerset wanted it more than Belle Vue, I think most on here have seen worse conditions.

 

Well done Somerset on a deserved victory. Belle Vue, sorry but I think we have no excuse.

[Najjer]

Awful ride by Sedgemen.

....and that was his best effort of the night too! Shows how poor he really was in his previous 3 races.

[STEPHEN 333]

....and that was his best effort of the night too! Shows how poor he really was in his previous 3 races.

Well he did have Davey Watt spannering for him in the pits all night, probably riding his bikes and using his engines too,

 

Sorry but the time is up for Sedgemen.

[Aces51]

I wasn't at this meeting but interesting comments in the Speedway Star. Lemon says that he didn't blame the result on the conditions but that all of the riders wanted a sufficient delay to allow the track to be sorted out before heat 9 or 10. He said the referee put the riders at risk. Josh Grajczonek agreed and comments that safety should be the most important thing. There is a photo of Josh racing caked in mud and with no goggles, having had to remove them to be able to see. Josh said he normally goes through no more than 4 tear offs in a meeting but went through more than 40 in this meeting, including 7 in the race where he had to remove his goggles on the third lap.

[Najjer]

I wasn't at this meeting but interesting comments in the Speedway Star. Lemon says that he didn't blame the result on the conditions but that all of the riders wanted a sufficient delay to allow the track to be sorted out before heat 9 or 10. He said the referee put the riders at risk. Josh Grajczonek agreed and comments that safety should be the most important thing. There is a photo of Josh racing caked in mud and with no goggles, having had to remove them to be able to see. Josh said he normally goes through no more than 4 tear offs in a meeting but went through more than 40 in this meeting, including 7 in the race where he had to remove his goggles on the third lap.

Contrasting attitudes to that of Allen, Wright, Worrall, Fricke and Lawson who just got on with it and got stuck in. Too many modern day speedway riders want a track like a snooker table and will throw their toys away if it's anything less than perfect.

[Aces51]

Contrasting attitudes to that of Allen, Wright, Worrall, Fricke and Lawson who just got on with it and got stuck in. Too many modern day speedway riders want a track like a snooker table and will throw their toys away if it's anything less than perfect.

I am old enough to remember when riders just put boiler suits over their leathers and got on with it so have sympathy with your point. However, the article says that all of the riders wanted the delay.

[Gresham]

I wasn't at this meeting but interesting comments in the Speedway Star. Lemon says that he didn't blame the result on the conditions but that all of the riders wanted a sufficient delay to allow the track to be sorted out before heat 9 or 10. He said the referee put the riders at risk. Josh Grajczonek agreed and comments that safety should be the most important thing. There is a photo of Josh racing caked in mud and with no goggles, having had to remove them to be able to see. Josh said he normally goes through no more than 4 tear offs in a meeting but went through more than 40 in this meeting, including 7 in the race where he had to remove his goggles on the third lap.

It's hard to fathom how this actually happened.

 

I was there...it wasn't that wet. I've seen far worse in many years of watching speedway.

 

How the hell did they manage in the past, when it was deep tracks, sometimes soaking wet, with no dirt deflector and no tear offs. Just monkey masks and a clipped on piece of Perspex to your visor if you were lucky.

 

All I can think, is that it is the high revving engines causing the wheel to spin faster and hence throw the dirt higher...even with deflector...

[Cliffeboy]

Also was not at the meeting but I'm getting increasingly bored with this chat about track conditions. I think it was the same for both teams, and it is normally the team that is losing that makes the most complaints. It makes a change from the charge that the track was prepared for the home team, another old chestnut. From the updates it looks like the riders that attacked the track did well, this was backed up by heat 14 which was on you tube where Jake went for it and Sedgy clearly didn't.

[EnglishRoundabout]

I was there and I can assure others who weren't there that the track was in no way unfit to ride.

 

For the Rebels, Wright, Allen and Lawson, literally flew around the OTA. There were plenty of racing lines which they and Worrall, Fricke and Bjerre for the Aces, exploited with regular ease.

 

I am astounded that someone like Lemon thought the track was dangerous. Sure, plenty of riders were regularly throwing down tear offs but trust me, to watch the above mentioned hurtling into each bend showed me and the fans at the track that the OTA was more than raceable.

[Najjer]

I am old enough to remember when riders just put boiler suits over their leathers and got on with it so have sympathy with your point. However, the article says that all of the riders wanted the delay.

Surely that just proves the theory even more that the riders were wrong - as the meeting continued, be all means far from being a classic but there was still some decent racing. Not just follow the leader.... and best of all 99% of the fans would of gone home happy after seeing a decent meeting and 15 heats of speedway too with next to no delays.

 

Certain riders nowadays will always moan it's too wet, it's too dry, it's too slick, it's too windy, it's too sunny, blah blah blah. Fair play to the ref who got the call spot on.