THE DEAN MACHINE

i was reading yesterday some posts from graham hurry saying that paul used a GTR last season, did 22 meetings without any service work and he actually made a bit of money although I doubt he was on a crap deal but the point is the engine, there will be riders who are lesser standard or equal that spent £££££ with englebert fancypants engine tuning and lost a fortune and cant make it pay and will tell you a million reasons why they wont use a GTR, there is a lesson there somewhere for not just riders but speedway as a whole but don't expect it to be learnt

Speedway was the loser because it had a chance to address the cost issue and mechanically at least get a sound footing to build on, unfortunatly the sport is riddled with people with their head buried in the sand like you who can’t ever see the bigger picture and offer nothing more than cheap jibes

Funny how czestochowa are leading the meeting and then the track gets mysteriously over watered which is unusual for gorzow and czestochowa fall apart

If lindgren comes to the party the gorzow will be in trouble but at the moment he is not making a dent in the meeting

Musiliak should of gone there

Anybody struggling for a link , add me on Facebook, it’s on my Facebook live , dean felton

I thought so, not sure why he isn’t picked over thorsell or even gomolski, I don’t think thorsell can cut it in poland and what has gone wrong for protasiewicz ?

Is my imagination playing tricks with me or has Martin smolinski signed for falubaz this season ?

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