THE DEAN MACHINE

It can do it and it will but it’s not a question of just putting a seal on an engine, there needs to be a happy medium struck between the riders and SCB and once in place that’s where the fun really starts trying to police it, I said earlier GM seem keen for the idea and I know people like broomie the engine tuner is all for change but you got to convince the riders and you know how they will react

If Harris comes tomorrow and passes the Brummies for fun then the excuses about the track are not valid

Falabaz reserves keeping the scoreline respectable

It’s run by the riders

Tatum did the same in the Dudley wolves trophy meetings and if he got a maximum for the spoons in the morning he had to get a maximum at night for wolves otherwise we would of nailed him to a dart board 😂

Not that it won’t work and we cant or shouldn’t do it as I think we can and we will but speedway works on 100% wheel spin, every other bike sport works on 100% drive, it is exactly the opposite, like asking a colander manufacturer how to make a boat,moto 2 etc is purely down to achieving the most amount of power out of a unit and that will win races, speedway has nothing to do with actual maximum power, it’s how you can get the actual power available to get a spinning wheel to go forward it’s nothing to do with learning from professionals, remember when akrapovic tried to build a speedway silencer ? A world leading silencer manufacturer used in professional bike sports everywhere and where is it ? Nowhere because it didn’t work aswell as Dave kings Chinese made ones

Not being from that area I can only look on from a far but from what I see, they have a no1 who on occasions takes the pee with his performances, another rider who puts Poland before Workington and I can only guess how that makes the worky fans feel, running in an afternoon imo is not great but wouldn’t stop me going, price again is too expensive but again wouldn’t stop me going, no continuity with home meetings is frustrating and in general the team being poor results wise will always affect a crowd, football is a perfect example of that

Bit before my time but I would of loved to go to meetings where jack Millen rode, he knew how to wind a crowd and other riders up

1st idea brilliant, second idea has already been tried a couple of years back, can’t remember why it failed but from what I remember some riders were less than interested in doing it (Money on offer probably)

Not as simple as that I’m afraid, some riders like their engines to scream and some like them flat to achieve the same goal, different flywheels, different cams, different compression, these can’t be changed at a track, here is an example I have told a few years ago, I was travelling to a meeting with Adam skornicki and he was telling me at a meeting in Poland his bike packed up before a race and Jason crump lent him his bike for the race and Adam said as much as he was greatful crumps engine was unridable, it just wanted to put him in the fence every lap, yet crump got a maximum on it, both GMs but completely different way of achieving their power delivery and that is completely widespread in speedway today, I’m not saying standardising couldn’t or shouldn’t happen but it’s not a easy as it seems

Standardise engines is more problematic in speedway because unlike other motorsports it has 100% wheel spin where all other sports are 100% direct drive, engines can be made the same but if you have a rider like zagar over 6ft and a rider like Ben cook at around 5 foot they clearly require different engine characteristics to work for them, it is possible to get some form of standardisation but there isn’t the will to do it, a classic example of the ridiculous nature of speedway is the rev limiter, it got mooted that they wanted to limit the revs so they asked the tuners and not wanting to hurt their business set the limit at a higher rev than is actually used during a race, so every rider was made to buy a coil per bike with a limiter which in reality does absolutely nothing during a race, you may here it cut in with some riders on the start line but under load it’s not used but if you had a limiter at say 10,000 revs riders and tuners would have kittens

Bit of a rut at leszno on 1st/2nd bend

Interesting to read posts recently by GM engines themselves, they seem to want standardised engines with harder tyres and less revs, they make a Standard GM witch costs less but say there is no call for it

Because it’s the only commercial success in British speedway but i get your point

What worries me about any plan that may be a foot is the people it’s being left to do it, it’s nothing personal, I’m sure they are great people but when it comes to sorting out something so big as the mess that we are in we need someone independent with a background in modern day sports promotion and the corporate world,someone who could sell oil to the Arabs,of the current bspl/scb not singling out anyone but you can’t even get them to return your calls or emails, I know these people care about the sport and have the sport at heart but when it comes to dealing with real big wigs from the corporate world the difference in the room is huge,you may aswel have an English man trying to deal with a china man and neither speak the other’s language, we are at the crossroads, we either find this person’s or we go the amatuer way and try to rebuild the sport from the bottom which is fine to point with me but maybe not with others

Something can, what or who is the question

Don’t know if they are actually going ahead yet but they are certainly floating whatever it is they have around their members and that’s where it becomes a closed door, I have good friends within the sport and even those are not being told,I only know something is afoot and it is supposed to be drastic,the bit I posted about upsetting a few was a chat with a promoter about a way he thought was a way forward and he as going to put it to the bspl,the 2 may not be connected

When I started out in 1991 you went to a training school and the bikes were literally nailed together,1 bike, frames were as bent as Graham Norton and if you had a matching set of mudgaurds you were seen as flash, race suits were hand me downs with holes in the arse cheeks but it all had an innocence about it, go to one today and even riders who can’t get a skid on have new equipment, I have a guy by where I live, can barely skid the bike but has 3 GMs in Jawa chassis, never going to make a rider just does it for fun but has top equipment, remember in motox in the 80s/90s there were kids that we called all the gear no idea well from about 2010 onwards speedway has them now

Whatever the current situation is the fact remains crowd numbers are not enough, there are of course other incomes like track hiring, flat track, even talk of car boot sales there and things like the comets lager which all generate income and the previous mentioned sponsorship but ultimately the club should be able to support itself from gate money, Workington for me is the role model for all tracks/set up for our sport especially any potential new one and if cradley ever get planning this will be their model too but the sport seems to be letting it down

This is imo the actual problem with British domestic speedway, the team concept only really exists in the name not in the practice and therefor the team fan can’t relate to their team and so has no emotional attachment and so doesn’t feel the need to support it, when riding I always felt different to other riders, I really brought into the team I rode for, when I rode for Berwick I felt like they were my fans and I was their rider, it felt like home and when I left I was genuinely upset and I still have good friends there today, i didnt live there but stayed with the Meldrums quite a lot and was often on the beach or in the town at weekends but I knew other riders didnt feel the same and were there for the money and it was the same at other teams, one conversation I always remember was with Barry Evans, I was at lakeside for a meeting and leaning over the fence before the meeting talking about the GP that week, and he said I don’t know why you watch the GPs or any speedway really on tv it’s boring I only do it cause I get paid to do it and I can remember thinking I wonder how the crowd would feel if they knew that ? Perhaps subconsciously they did feel it,As a fan I felt like the emotional attachment to teams ended around the mid 90s, there was always a surge of emotion around the play offs but in general it’s not like it used to be or should be for a team event, how do we get it back or can we get it back ? That’s the question

You know what I’ve been saying for a few years now British speedway is run by the riders for the riders

Well yes we can and it’s not difficult or expensive but and here is the problem, how do you police it, a classic example is the GT140 grasstrack which has become very popular, a standard engine costs around £450 and was seen as a bit of fun and entry level to bigger things but now as it’s popularity has grown riders are buying heads for these engines that cost more than double the cost of the engine, all for that little edge, one tuner has been banned because he was putting all sorts of trick stuff in the engines, it can be policed but it is hard

Be careful saying things like this will have Richie worral getting his head out of his bag of coke to slate you and inform you how wrong you are while being cheered on by the likes of Mike lemon

While I agree with this post, even Ian Thomas would struggle today, the financial world is collapsing, businesses are going to the wall at an alarming rate and even the multinational companies are seeing a downturn in business, people are starting to really feel it and questioning their free time expenditure, speedway is easy pickings because that’s where your post comes into play,up to this point speedway itself is 90% to blame for the state it is in but this year the crowds have plummeted at quite a few tracks, with a few doing ok and some doing ok when it’s an attractive fixture,there is no easy fix for this and it’s easy to blame the promoters but this time it’s not them

I’m told it was 250 but yes that could of excluded season ticket holders