Vince

It's been said before but make a 2 valve Jawa short stroke with light flywheels (which is what would happen) and it wouldn't be even slightly more reliable than what you have now.

Something that could be done that would improve safety is to have a secret ballot of riders when they have complained about track conditions. I have seen situations where riders have been put under pressure by their promoters/ managers to continue with a meeting and there's absolutely no point in asking Ms Vardy or the like to make a decision on whether a track is safe to ride. As for making more protective clothing compulsory I would really disagree. To my way of thinking all riders know the risks and are probably the best placed to decide what they need. You need rules about the minimum sensible requirements but the rest should be down to the people at risk to decide.

Racing is to be split into two meetings. All the Youth classes, Minibikes and Rookies will race in the morning with practice starting at 10.30 and racing following straight on. Pro, Restricted, Thunderbike and Vintage classes will practice at 1.30 and start racing immediately practice is finished. What else can you do for free on a Sunday afternoon that would be so much fun!! I'm No 95 and if you're not too embarrassed after seeing me ride then come and say Hi.

Have to say that I really dislike Graham Drury but in this case think the wrong person is getting the stick. The rule is there for good reason and it doesn't take a lot of effort to ask permission, Somerset must have been mad not to considering it was Drury's riders they wanted to use. Riders might be self employed but like most small companies they have to keep their main customers happy and I can also understand Birmingham not wanting them riding in friendlies at the moment. One meeting at this stage of the season isn't going to make a world of difference to their progress.

To look at this from another angle I have been racing motorcycles of one form or another for 40 years on and off and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it half so much if it wasn't dangerous. It is an inherent part of motorcycle sport and one that the competitors are aware of and talk to most of them and they are actually quite proud of past injuries. Having said that nobody wants to see people seriously hurt if it can be avoided so there are things that can and probably should be done but in my opinion if you get over obsessed with health and safety you could ruin what is an important part of the sport for the competitors. You only have to look at how society in general has become much more safety conscious while extreme sports have become more popular. Many young men in particular like danger and those are the lads that might come into Speedway. They are also the people who will come and watch a spectacular and dangerous sport if anyone ever tells them what it's like!

The final round of the Dirt track/ short track Championship takes place at Rye House on 13th September. Most of the Championships are still up for grabs with the gap between the top two in the Pro Class being a single point. Young Oliver Brindley currently leads Aidan Collins by a single point and with the British Champion also getting an automatic entry and their flights paid for the Super Prestigio event in Las Vegas you can be sure there will be no quarter asked or given. Also in the mix will be the Neave twins who aren't in the running to win the Championship after missing rounds to compete in Road Racing but will be out to prove that they are as fast as anybody. Current third place rider and star of the 'how low can you go' video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ryMrVl0gg many will have seen on Facebook or youtube Alan Birtwhistle will also be looking to end the season with a victory. The Pro class is getting more competitive every year and the racing is generally fierce with twelve riders on the track at a time. Other classes include Vintage, Thunderbike, mini bike, Restricted (intermediate) and Rookies. Rye House suits the bikes so the racing is good and spectating is free. I will post a schedule as soon as I know it.

I'd rather see riders made to sit still and then only penalised if they touch the tapes. Generally starts are much more even now than they were in the days when rolling was allowed. That's what I want to see, 4 riders coming out of the start at the same time.

I thought that in his first race Tai proved that he is the best rider in the world at the moment and could well go on to be one of the best of all time. His ability to find grip and set up a pass from any part of the track is unbelievable. Recently I have thought his attitude on TV had improved a great deal and was very disappointed with the swearing. Like most I swear at work and use those same words all the time but I wouldn't do so in a room full of kids or older people which is effectively what he did. The first one was understandable the second one arrogance in my opinion. If he were to start his next GP interview with an apology he would impress those who feel like myself and undo any harm I'm sure. Good GP with some very hard racing, good job it wasn't NP pulling some of those moves as this topic would be 100 pages by now :-)

LGV drivers can actually drive for a maximum of 56 hours per week or 90 hours in two weeks. You can work for more hours than that though and are allowed to do three 15 hour days per week with the rest being 13 hours max. It's all very complicated though and nothing is as straight forward as it seems, as you'd expect of any EU legislation that could be really easy to understand given a bit of thought. My standard hours are 65 per week of nights and I would love to be paid to race motorcycles even if it was in different countries and a bit busy sometimes!! Something I would add is that although the superstars are riding in different countries and spend a lot of time travelling they tend to have somebody else driving. The real worry would be PL and NL riders who are working and getting themselves to meetings, their hours could be really long at times.

Don't think a rev limiter would be any different to over revving an engine which happens all the time now.

It's always going to be difficult to come up with a tyre solution as they need to be consistent and as soon as you provide less grip they will soften the engines further to compensate and it wouldn't be long before you were back to square one. That's not to say tyres couldn't be part of an overall plan. The different tyres for conditions is unlikely because the numbers wouldn't be high enough to interest any manufacturer at a sensible cost.

Unfortunately riders need every ounce of traction at times. Personally I would hate to see any device bought into the sport that took control from the riders.

I'm convinced that Bream has it absolutely right in his last post. It's not about the amount of power that is produced but how it's produced. If you choose to reduce power by lowering the capacity limit you would potentially be making that band where the bike is rideable even narrower and therefore 50hp could be a whole lot more dangerous than 75hp. Unlike just about any other motor sport wheelspin is safer than grip. I still think a minimum stroke coupled to a rev limiter would be the way to go rather than worry about hp figures. Maybe give free rein engine wise to the GP but in my mind there is no doubt that long stroke engines with heavier flywheels would make bikes easier to ride and set up.

Is anywhere open for practice over the August Bank Holiday weekend? The further south the better but I need to get out somewhere.

There are limited things you can change to make Speedway safer and most will have a for and against argument anyway. The biggest improvement would be a large run off area but you can't have that if you want Speedway in stadiums. Silencers might cause issues but would certainly cause less problems on the older style long stroke engines yet that doesn't appear to be an option on any riders list. Yet again if you want Speedway in stadiums you need to learn to live with noise reduction as the limit will be lower in years to come. The only thing I would say on that score is that it would seem to me to be much simpler to have a noise limit and let competitors fit any silencer that complies. The amount of power the bike makes after you get past about 60hp is pretty irrelevant to safety in my opinion, the way it is produced being far more important. I would bet that many more crashes are caused by bikes that are too soft than too powerful on Speedway. As the earlier post proves the actual speeds aren't so much higher as to have much, if any impact on injuries. If speed needs to be reduced I would look towards tyres or possibly wheelbase to make the bikes drive less but the riders and tuners would soon find a way around that. Neck protectors (the expensive ones at least) appear to be a no brainer safety wise these days. There is no evidence that they cause the other injuries that people were concerned about and plenty that they protect a significant part of the spine. Apparently most severe spinal chord damage is in the middle back area which the neck protector doesn't help. I know that yet I don't wear one because I just find them too difficult and uncomfortable to wear. Could be argued that I haven't tried every make and model but it would cost thousands of pounds to do so. I'm fully aware of the risk but big enough and certainly old enough to make that choice and that's the way it should be. I was 10 when I got my first motorbike and my dad told me at the time that if I race bikes I will get hurt sometimes and there's no point whinging. My kids were told the same, it is part of life if you race bikes at any level and it wouldn't be as much fun if it wasn't. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Speedway has less life threatening injuries now than in the past. However I do think that there are probably more broken bones and crashes than there were although I have no evidence to back that up. However I think you will find that in most motorcycle sport as kids come along who accept broken bones as part of skateboarding and BMX before they even get to motorbikes, todays kids just seem to push harder and take more chances. You see that especially in Motocross, in a local club in the 80's it would be a bad year if you had a half dozen broken bones throughout the season. Now that would just be a bit of a bad meeting and that is down to the type of track the kids want to ride with lots of difficult jumps and the way they go about it. There are those who point out that if they were all riding BSA's on natural terrain tracks like in the 50s the injuries would be massively reduced and they are right. Not least because the sport would have died as nobody would want to race, however the number of competitors has grown by a large amount (and the number of spectators dwindled, like the majority of live sport).

The wages are completely immaterial to the risks riders take, by far the majority of people taking part in dangerous sports put all their money into it rather than get paid. There are competitors and spectators, competitors are the ones willing /wanting to take the risks. Whilst I think that light flywheels and short stroke engines don't help I don't think banning them would produce any significant reduction in serious injuries and nor would much else. It's a dangerous sport, no adult rider participates unaware of the risks, for many it's part of the attraction. Sometimes things go wrong and that will never change.

Easily said but just what will put things right? Ask 100 people on here and you'll get lots of ideas, most of which will cost money and not increase crowds. Unlike being BSPA Chairman nobody putting those ideas up has to sell it to the people who stand to lose a great deal of money. Personally I think the guy is at least being honest which is about all you can ask.

Unless, like me, you think that any artificial point scoring or management tactics takes something away from the best thing about Speedway which is it's simplicity. Four riders in a race, two teams of riders competing in their programmed rides the team which scores the most points wins. Anybody can understand that same as they can understand an injured rider being replaced by a lower order rider or reserve. The only thing I would do in an effort to diminish home track advantage would be to allow the losing team to select gates 1&3 or 2&4 or if level the away team. Not a major advantage but perhaps enough to encourage promoters to prepare a track their riders can pass on when they don't make the gate. Other rules: if riders have a punch up make sure the crowd can see it rather than fine them. If anybody other than a rider hits a rider ban them from the pits for life. Injured heat leaders can be replaced by any rider with a lower average. Everybody else by a reserve. Riders to race as programmed unless injured. 2 minutes comes on as the last rider passes the chequered flag except for scheduled grading. The rev limiter to be introduced for the start of next season. No oversquare engines. Think the sport would improve but wouldn't make hardly any difference to crowd levels, that needs a major change in the way it is marketed.

If you made everybody ride uprights tomorrow they would be short strokes with light flywheels so would be harder and not easier to ride.

Personally I think the new silencers wouldn't be an issue if long strokes and heavier flywheels were being used at lower revs. Air fences definitely need to be changed so they no longer disappear just before the rider gets there. Still think the Rye house 'collapsible' fence was as good as any air fence and better than many.

I actually think the opposite, this is a situation that will need rules enforcing to change the situation. Tuners and riders have too much of a vested interest to come up with unbiased solutions. Maybe some ex riders would be a better solution, much as he gets knocked on here I think Kelvin Tatum would be a good start. Not sure there is enough to be said about how a Speedway bike works to make it a regular feature, maybe 3 or 4 articles would be interesting but the actual changes that can be made are pretty limited.

Im with Oldace in that the short stroke, light flywheel engines make life difficult even for the GP riders but especially in the lower leagues. The rev limiter that seems to have disappeared could be used to make those engines redundant. Bringing the limit down in stages over a couple of seasons would make a healthy difference I think. Long stroke engines and heavier flywheels will also make the inevitable future noise reductions safer. Just don't advertise the fact you are trying to make the sport safer!!! As an afterthought I also think that the latest engines are more difficult to get set up for track conditions so getting rid of them could level the playing field a fair bit as well as improving engine longevity and therefore cost. The rev limiter is such a good idea I'm sure we'll never see it

I think the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion. One rider gets pushed wide by another rider, gets the hump and belts him. Hardly unique, its a tough sport and riders involved will hardly ever see the same incident the same way. Think NP missed a great opportunity by putting in a complaint about the incident. If he had let it go without any further action he could have answered every future complaint by the Monster gang by saying they didn't see him whinging when he was attacked. They seem to have built this up to the stage where they are egging each other on to moan about Pedersen although as somebody else pointed out it does appear that Tai has got away from that this year. I like NP and think he is great entertainment but he does push people hard, sometimes too hard in my opinion but not as often as his reputation gets him in trouble for stuff that others do without mention. What I don't like about him is that he does whinge when he gets knocked about, if you ride like that you should accept that it's going to happen to you sometimes. I think the sport will be very much poorer when NP retires and Kildemand makes him look like a saint.

I'm no fan either and thought it a really poor decision. However having met Mr Lawrence the idea of him accepting instructions from anybody is laughable

Typical shabby Speedway journalism, using facts and putting the truth ahead of somebody's right to a rant!!