DaveWayne

Always best to know what you are talking about before clicking the submit button. 😉 No driver in any stock car or banger formula is allowed to exit their car either on track or on the infield without the permission of the steward, unless the car is on fire. The circumstances you mention may have happened in the past, but not in recent years due to a driver being killed due to being hit after exiting his car.

Even if Sheffield ran without guests for their remaining 4 meetings they would most likely finish in front of Lynn. The best you can possibly end the season on is 25 points. To do that you have got to beat Leicester home and away, having already lost both legs of the R1 fixtures, and win away at Northampton which you failed to do in R1. Sheffield are on 20 points and more than likely going to take 3 from the Northampton home fixture, and would probably beat Belle Vue at home even if they ran with R/R for Holder. Having missed the 2022 playoffs through injury, Fricke has obviously decided that he may as well get settled in with his 2026 play off team early to give himself a good chance of a medal. 😉

Sorry but I don't understand how you are going to make that work. Are you basically saying you want to make 12 riders 'unemployed' just so they can be called on as and when needed ? If not a squad system where riders are aligned to a particular team even if not riding, then would that be a central pool of riders that anyone could call on ? How is that different to the current guesting rules ?

The model would have to change massively for a squad system to be used. A wage/retainer would have to be paid to all squad members as they wouldn't accept points payments if they weren't getting the chance to score them. Would this really be sustainable with teams already losing money ?

Unfortunately, it really isn't that profitable. The meeting that you are looking at for £15 admission is a 'domestic' meeting which will probably get a crowd of 500-100, so £7,500-15,000 admissions. Drivers will total 20-30 per class so about 90-100 for a 3 or 4 formula meeting, usually around £25 per car to enter, so about £2,500. A long way off your £40-50k estimate, and then you need to deduct the costs of putting on the meeting. The 2-3,000 crowds that you have heard about are for the big championship meetings or maybe 1-2,000 when F1s are on. The difference with F1s is that they don't pay to race, they actually receive start money and prize money, and also get 3 free admissions per driver for their mechanics, so the crowd figures will include up to 200 non-payers. The payout to drivers for an ordinary 40-50 car meeting is in the region of £6-7,000. I'm not saying there isn't profit to be made, but it is nowhere near the figures you are suggesting. As an example, most of the meetings at Buxton (High Edge) are for the 'domestic' formulas rather than the national ones. The promoter has openly stated that he has to run long meetings with 6 or 7 formulas just to break even, as the drivers paying to race plus their pit crews and families paying admission will just cover his costs of putting the meeting on. Any paying spectators (often less than 200) is profit, plus profit on food and drink, but many people take their own rather than buying it.

I was forgetting the additional 5% only applies at home - Fricke at home and Iversen away then. Or fingers crossed his average slips over their 4 remaining matches.😂

With the terrible news about Jack's injury, it looks like the only hope Sheffield now have of a decent tilt at the playoffs is if Kings Lynn fail to qualify and we can persuade Fricke to guest for us at number 1. 😉

From where we were stood on turn 3/4 it looked like Etheridge realised Fricke had beaten him to the outside dirt line and he tried to cut back inside onto the home straight but he turned too tight and locked up causing him to slow and giving Cook nowhere to go. There was no intent to cause a collision and had he not locked up he would probably have got away with it. But, even as a Tigers fan, I immediately said that Etheridge has to go as he was the cause of the accident. Was very surprised to see Cook's light come up.

Coventry had greyhounds from 1968 to 1986, then intermittently from 2004.

But that can happen without guesting as well, due to riders in multiple leagues, doubling up, GPs, etc. The year that Sheffield won the playoffs they lost 6 riders to injury at some point during the season, and only one of them was injured riding for Sheffield. The comparison with football is irrelevant whilever riders are allowed to compete in 2 or 3 countries. They are never riders for your club exclusively.

I wasn't suggesting that you have to accommodate every eventuality, just pointing out that the proposal of home meetings once a fortnight could completely exclude someone on a 2 shift system for a whole season. Can we afford for that to happen ? As some have already said, once people get out of the habit they often don't come back. Shift swaps are OK but I'm not sure you could do it every second Thursday for 5/6 months !!

But what about shift workers ? When I first went with my uncle in the 80s we only went every 2nd week as he alternated between days and afters. If you went to a rigid 'once a fortnight' people on shift patterns like that could potentially miss a full season if it fell wrong for them.

I'm not sure you can claim Kurtz as 'one of your own'. He had already been riding in the UK for 6 years, with 4 years in the top flight at Poole, topping their GSAs in his final year with them. Yes he has improved while he has been with Belle Vue but that would have happened with age and experience wherever he was riding. His improvement is not much different to Jack Holder who left Poole at the same to join Sheffield. Both have been loyal servants since then, but neither club can claim to have nurtured them to the extent that you may have done with some of the others.

But the same could be said of the R1 fixture which was 44-34 after heat 13, and a last heat 5-1 the other way would have made it 48-42. The fact still remains that over 15 heats Ipswich only scored 1 point more than their previous visit, despite Sheffield running R/R for one of the best riders in the world. That suggests to me that they performed worse than their previous visit.

1 point more than their previous visit when Tigers were at full strength. Not sure it's that decent ?

Tai has retired now so we should be OK. 😉

Fact or gossip ? The latest accounts published on companies house (up to September 2025) show an improved financial position compared to the previous year.

It's very reminiscent of what was done at Long Eaton as well. The 'save the stadium' campaign was strong, but obviously with speedway fans being more regionalised and stock car fans following drivers rather than locations, the speedway side was far stronger. When the developers were not making any progress, they came up with a new plan which would rotate the track through 90 degrees, freeing up land that could be developed for industrial purposes. This development would generate the funds for the new track. Of course, this was never going to happen, but unfortunately the leaders of the campaign group were speedway fans and they bought the lies. Obviously, without pit space there was never going to be any stock cars there again, so a wedge was immediately driven between the two factions as the stock car fans felt like they were being sold out. This 'new speedway track' at Brandon will have exactly the same effect on the campaign groups at Coventry if the speedway side show any signs of weakness towards it. There is no way that a new stadium could survive purely on income from speedway and the developers know this.

Can anyone who has been before advise as to whether the best option is advance ticket or pay on arrival ?

Another subtle dig at Sheffield ? Maybe you never saw how much Tai was helping the other riders, even when he was injured and still turning up to the matches ? Or Chris Holder, or Picko ? Look at Flint last year compared to his previous few seasons. Team spirit is very high at Sheffield and all the younger riders comment on it.

You have to watch out for those flying cows. Awful mess if one of them craps on you. 💩

It doesn't say Speedway ended, it says the final event at Belle Vue Stadium. I'm pretty sure the new venue isn't called that, just the team ?

Will be interesting to see if this thread gets the same hour by hour analysis of the latest forecasts as the Lynn thread did on Monday, or was that just special treatment because people don't like Buster ? I assume the Ipswich fans who were all over it, despite the meeting not involving them, will be equally critical of their own team if the forecast rain doesn't arrive. 😉

I don't disagree with that, but why post about it on an Ipswich thread ? Previous references to him on here have been accusations of him not pulling his weight away from home for Belle Vue and that he has other priorities. All you have done is to back up that theory. 😉

No, but taking 3 laps to go from 1st to last at Owlerton last week was embarassing. It's laughable that Belle Vue fans are crowing about how well Kurtz is riding in Poland. All you are doing is proving that he is far more committed to them than he is to you.