THE DEAN MACHINE

bomber is the top scoring non qualifier so more than anybody he deserves a wild card but there should be no wildcard at all at world championship level

Watching the press conference Doyle seems to be blaming the fans and social media, saying they are being put under pressure by the fans

Holder did a practice start and got his foot caught under the bike in a rut

What are the rules in Poland about signing new riders mid season ?

I think the sport in Britain is beyond repair until a total colaspe and then rebuild from scratch but I don’t blame buster, yes he has been in charge but even when he makes a correct stand against something he gets slated, something I see is too few people having too many fingers in too many pies, it’s always the same names and that’s when conflict of interest happens and when you have that nothing gets acheived

Makes you wonder if with hindsight riders like NKI and drodz wonder if they should of joined tarnow where they would be garenteed a ride

I didn’t go on Saturday as I watched the GP but I am reliably informed by certain people that stoke had put new shale on the track and a quote from one rider was “it was mint” his words not mine,however cause some riders couldn’t handle more dirt dave scraped it off after heat 5 , funny enough the same rider loves riding Buxton’s track and often hits big scores there, that rider has the right attitude, it’s a shame others don’t follow, while the generator needs sorting and somebody please sort missery guts out in the bar, the track is not a problem, if it’s rough it’s rough some tracks are, you put inexperianced riders out on bikes they don’t really understand on a rough track then what do you expect ? I watch some national league riders and they are going faster than they can handle and are generally being taken for a ride by the bike, dave and his team are really trying to get stoke back to where it should be but it’s difficult on a shoe string,

That is a valid point for all the tuning and money that is thrown at engines the actual bike speed is roughly the same as 20 years ago the 2 big differences are the speed of the back wheel and entry speed into the corners but the bike speed is roughly the same

It’s the engines itself, short stroke, light flywheels etc , it’s a very high revving rocket that has a very small margin for error, compare it to a long stoke which has loads more scope but less speed

It’s not the set up of the engine it’s the engine itself , practibility and general control has been binned in pursuit of speed, it what the riders want and it understandable but the modern engine doesn’t like less than perfect tracks, Stoke was rough when I rode there in the 90s but the bikes managed it ok, the problem is the modern engine but unless it’s made the rules where a more manageable engine is mandatory then we will still get the same issues and I’m afaid convincing riders to change anything is impossible even if the sport benifited, at buxton I’ve seen riders who ride with the throttle wide open bin it because buxton takes more brains than horsepower and the stocks are no real difference to a sufface , Scunthorpe, Kings Lynn, Sheffield all have stocks and are fine, if you bump into Tony Atkin ask him if he like stoke or buxton rough or smooth ?

The question should be when are the riders going to get their head out of their arses and see that the engines are so unforgiving that at the sign a unperfect track the meetings get called off, get in to conversation with top riders about a meeting that gets called of and their response is the worksble spot in modern engines is so small that anything other than a perfect track they become hard to ride, so as I said at the beginning where is the problem ?

You would think that test matches against Denmark were already arranged for this summer but the new GB team set up seems more interested in get the unemployment figures down rather than putting a team on track

Match is a bit of a non event but some of the racing is decent

Well done to woffinden, rode some smart moves and a couple of brave ones when it mattered

I think i pay about £350 a year for 2 policy’s but they are not the basic ones with CICA, it’s a small price to pay even though I don’t race anymore, I did have another policy with them for being off work through sickness but being self employed you find you need to be almost dead before you have a day off so I stopped that one, I don’t know who the top riders use but there must be good insurance out there

It costs about the same as having the latest mobile phone with a contract

The public liability insurance is more for the crowd than the riders, the basic insurance for the riders is poor and always has been but is better than nothing so most get their own personal insurance and the riders benevelent fund also help, I’m not sure they take on new riders anymore but the one to have was the CICA insurance, it was used by pretty much all the riders and sports people in general and it covers you for all sorts of injuries not just racing but they stopped taking new riders a few years ago I believe because some sports competitors were falsely claiming for injuries, not speedway riders other sports but I have always had my suspicions about one rider that was abusing the system

I didn’t even know it was on tonight at Poole until I saw Cook had pulled out

It doesn’t work like that for competitors in motor sport and rightly so, nobody is forcing you to race and so you are really you are excepting the dangers involved, the last thing any sport needs is someone trying to challenge that, it would end up there being no sport whatsoever, but there should be a lot of care taken on fences, lighting and objects on the Center of track, it’s up to the rider to take out the necercary personal insurance, any rider riding without it is a fool , I still have mine today even though I retired years ago as it covers pretty much any accident ,on another point about stoke’s track being rough or whatever has it ever occurred to riders that they maybe riding the wrong engine ?? Unlikely, but it is a fact that a good percentage of NL riders are riding engines that they have no idea about the equipment they are riding or how to set a bike up but of course they will always tell you it’s the track

Again I haven’t said anything bad about the track, it’s brilliant, I don’t pay my money to be told how to walk ,talk, drink,stand sit and to be generally treated like someone who doesn’t understand how to live without dying every day , the London stadium is exactly the same and im in no rush to go back there either . Insane I may be but doesn’t change the fact that I have no intrest in going to the NSS but I may go to stoke again this year and if one person would disappear I might even try to help the club

While this maybe true about speedway in general my dislike of NSS is because of my hatred of health and safety but I still sat with a blank piece of paper to start with the stadium is very ordinary and not even a modern stadium design

I have not said anything about the racing being bad although the day I was there mechanicing the racing was spaced out with I think 1 pass but that was more to do with the away team being poor , but as I said enjoy it, it’s not for me and in the last point I am on the verge of joining the lost 1000s and becoming an ex british speedway fan

The size of the crowd doesn’t matter it’s a dull uninspiring design for a new stadium that hold similar size crowds to some new polish stadiums ,it’s not even 50 miles away and I agree the racing is good but I’m not paying my hard earned money to be treated like cattle who can’t think for themselves, enjoy your stadium it’s nust not for me

I’m not winding anyone up and I didn’t say loomer road was a better venue than NSS I just said it has more sole and I prefer to go to stoke of which that is a fact , I don’t think I will ever attend NSS again, it’s not a threat I just don’t like the place and have no wish to go, I missed my first World Cup in years when it was a NSS just because of the venue , it has no sole

I’m sure everything you say about the NSS is true but I won’t go, I don’t like it, it’s soleless and a H&S jizz fest and although the track is amazing I just feel about the stadium is they had a blank piece of paper and that’s the best you could come up with ? I guess I compare it to polish new stadiums which have sole and create atmosphere even when they are half full , my problem with stoke is one person, yes the generator issues need to be fixed but the fact is I have been to stoke twice this season and I have no desire to attend the NSS