DaveWayne

It is a delicate and ongoing legal situation, so no 'paying off' has taken place. The stock car promoters have stated that there will be no racing there in 2026, and have taken their fixtures to other venues for the coming season, but at present have not ruled out a return in 2027. Stock car fans are not happy as the same thing happened in 1997 when the Sky money first poured into the Super League and they forced us out to build their fully enclosed 'Superdome'. Since then they have bounced from one financial disaster to another, and when Startrax reopened Odsal in 2021 the Bulls had been absent for 2 seasons as they couldn't afford to play there. Without stock cars they would still be playing home matches at Dewsbury (although rumour was they were getting kicked out of there due to a dispute at the time). To then screw the ones that got them back into Odsal 5 years later shows them in a very bad light.

The lease was far longer than that. I believe there were about 17 years left. The rubgy club have even lifted the shale without telling the stock car promoters !!

2 x 3 day meetings, both Friday to Sunday, so in theory shouldn't impact too much on speedway being run on a Monday or Thursday. Deane Wood works very hard on the track over these weekends, often starting the prep for the following day as soon as the meeting has finished, then back on it again from early morning. The 2 meetings are 11th-13th and 25th-27th. The only dates that may be unavailable for speedway in that month would be the Mondays immediately following those weekends.

You should try working on a car in there on a cold wet night !!

That doesnt resolve the rubbishty floor that you find in most stockcar pits. If you ever go to Kings Lynn, have a look at the stock car pits on the back straight, and then tell me speedway riders would be happy in there.

Not sure how you work that one out. Stock cars don't have nice concrete pits with cover like speedway does, so you couldn't just chuck a few bikes in there, and they can't give up space for extra speedway pits to be be built as some bigger stock car meetings have to restrict car numbers as it is due to lack of pit space.

But as gets said on many threads, as an away rider you are up against track specialists. When he guested in 2024 he scored a paid maximum 10+2 at number 2. Only beaten twice by Jack Holder.

Do they have his other 2 clubs correct for 2026 ? And was he one of their announced riders before his accident ?

I was more talking about people on here rather than the 'powers that be'. Some are talking as if it is just as simple as "it's a shale track so we can race on it". It's also going to need a lot of work on track prep during the season or we will see a hell of a lot of rain offs. Having been to a few wet meetings there in the last few years, I have seen it resemble anything from a ploughed field to an ice rink. It's a very different surface to some other shale tracks.

Have any of the people assuming that Northampton is an option actually been to the track in recent years ? I don't know the rulings on 'infields' for speedway, but the inside of both corners does not have an inner kerb any more, so the race track literally goes up to a plate fence several feet high. This could be counteracted to some degree by white line marking an 'inner kerb' further out and narrowing the corners, but there is still the issue of a rider potentially losing control on the straight and ploughing into the end of the raised banking. These raised areas can't just be removed as they create the 'safe zone' for the stock car marshals.

Playoffs/shootouts/etc. have their place in sports where there are a large number of competitors. In football, it has had the impact of keeping more teams in with a shout of promotion towards the end of the season. This means there are a lot less 'dead rubbers' so it keeps the crowd numbers up and benefits the clubs financially. In F1 stock car racing, we had the issue of the 'national points championship' often being decided with 2 months of the season still to go, meaning numbers on both sides of the fence tended to drop off after the World Championship in September. By bringing in an end of season shootout, the battle for the silver roof goes to the final meeting of the season, and the crowd numbers for the 12 shootout rounds are far higher than they would have been in previous years. The difference is though, that in football the top 25% in each division are in with a chance of promotion, in stockcars you are looking at 16 out of over 100 drivers can win the silver roof. To have a season long tournament where 60-80% of the competitors can still win at the end of the season, irrespective of how far behind they might be does seem very farcical.

Absolutely no chance of shale going down again at Skegness. The shale track was massively off putting for the midweek holiday crowd for stock car meetings. What they have there now is one of the best tarmac stock car tracks in the country in terms of a mix of speed and action, with minimal track preparation required, and far cleaner for the 'once a year' holiday makers to have a family night out.

Not sure that would go down well with the Witches fans. After the abuse he has been given on here over recent years, it would be interesting to see if they are fickle and suddenly love him when he wears their colours, or if they stay away in protest. 🤔

Sorry, I was at a family party so I went for the quick option on wiki. Holder still had a higher GSA than Fricke in both 2023 and 2024.

2025 Fricke 10.19 Holder 9.52 2024 Holder 9.48 Fricke 9.18 2023 Holder 9.65 Fricke 8.82 2022 Fricke 8.62 Holder 8.56