HenryW

Unbelievably it looks like Alex Loktaev could be heading for an early exit from the tournament with zero from his first two races.

Well, this has turned out to be a disappointing thread to read.... I expected Edinburgh to be declared the villains of the PL due to us having the BSPA boss manipulating everything in our favour

Richie IS signed for Daugavpils this season. They have only done 2 league meetings so far and he hasn't been selected for either of them...although one might suggest that he would have been a better choice than Pepe Franc in the match at Bydgoszcz... Steve seems to be doing quite well at the Dale so if helping his bro was really his reason for signing for a Friday night club in the Premier League, things seem to have worked out fairly well for him

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no, none of those are a record... Do I win anything if I am right

That's an impressively negative view after a victory against a team viewed by many to be one of the better ones in the league.

It's interesting to see that Zielona Gora are making 1 change to their team after their home defeat last weekend...AJ replaces Jablosnki. The team being declared this weekend is the one that I expected to be the regular first choice 7 during this season. I suspect that Rafal may be regretting his team selection last weekend, where he maybe expected to be able to win without needing to go full strength at home.

I don't see a problem with Chris Harris racing in the qualifiers. He has earned the right to take part by being one of the best British riders, even if he isn't quite up to the standard of the GP series. I'm sure he'll be happy heading to Berwick for this round rather that going to St Johann again where he was knocked out of the qualifying rounds last year.

Yes, it's mainly aerodynamic and MotoGP riders will usually wear separate back protectors underneath the leathers. I'm sure Martin Smolinski used to use one when racing longtrack. I'm not sure if he still does. As for MotoGP using leather; I think the simple fact is that leather offers better abrasion protection and that is far more important in MotoGP than speedway. A rider never slides very far on the track before hitting a fence in speedway, but they can slide a long, long way in MotoGP. If speedway riders want to move on to the lightweight kangaroo leather that MotoGP riders wear, their costs will increase greatly.

I think the Rybnik manager needs to get some help...Selecting Harris for heat 14! What was he thinking?

Yeah, it's hard to argue with Steve Worrall as a choice. 4 LC meetings into the season and he is averaging 9.39 with bonus and 7.65 without bonus off a starting average of 3.00. I think we all knew that he could do better than 3, but I am not sure anyone could ever have predicted that he would be scoring quite as well as he has done so far...Long may it continue, though

FTFY...no need to thank me

I enjoyed Crumpy's input to the commentary but dislike Tapp's style immensely. I will be looking forward to the return of Nigel at the next round!

Nice comment...I am wondering where you got the "much hyped" bit from...I admit that I don't read every post on here, but I haven't seen much suggesting that anyone expected more from Lewis than they did from Brady this season. I have seen a lot of hype about Brady, and a lot of discussion around the fact that he has been assessed at an average below what he should have been, and not too much talk about Lewis...maybe I just read the wrong parts of the forum, though

A very solid looking performance from Edinburgh and nice to see Aaron get on the scoreboard after spending some time with Cookie this week to sort out his bikes. The Bandits fans will surely have come away disappointed after having seen a "normal" result for them at the Dale.

Craig Cook is scheduled to be racing for Edinburgh on each of the 3 dates that this competitions is being held on.

I am sure that everyone on here is just as surprised to hear this as I am

Yeah, but it's an official FIM competition, something that John mentioned in the first line of his post!

It's because it isn't an official competition just a glorified series of challenge meetings. The Brits have decided to ignore it rather than suffer more disruption to the league season. There were certainly very few examples of good team riding in the meeting. I was shocked at Emil leaving Artem to fend for himself in their last race. Did I miss something or would they have knocked the Aussies out if they had taken a 7-2 from that race? The Australians were the ones that seemed to be looking for each other the most, so maybe deserving that they won this event.

They have actually moved the start line back a bit this season but the finish line remains in the same place, so the track is now very slightly longer...

It works fine on Windows 7 if run as an admin. I have never looked at why it requires elevated privileges, but will check that when I get a chance. Edit - In case you don't know, you can right click and select the option to run a program as an admin. 2nd Edit - Actually it seems that it only needs to run as Admin once. After that it runs fine with normal privileges. The creator of the game is on this forum, so he might know why it needs a first run elevated.

Sorry...I have to admit that I am rubbish when it comes to reading through a mass of posts in a long thread...I tend to skim read and miss the point occasionally. My spelling is generally still better than SCB's if that saves me at all

Let's imagine that the FIA and F1 went the same way that the FIM and speedway has gone.... Does anyone really think that things would be fine with the media partners of F1 if a new series was allowed to be started where European drivers or European teams were free to compete in alongside the F1 series? Despite its "Global image", F1 isn't so different from speedway as it's really still a European based series when it comes to drivers and teams even if the series visits tracks all round the Globe. Consider the fact that the 2013 final standings had non European drivers placed, as far as I can quickly work out, as follows: 3.Webber, 8.Massa, 11.Perez, 14.Ricciardo, 16.Gutierrez, 18.Maldonado When it comes to teams, it's even worse...The only non European teams were 6.Force India Mercedes and 11.Caterham-Renault, and both of those were actually based in Europe despite the ownership being outside of Europe. So, if all the F1 teams decided to take part in another "European" series alongside the Global F1 series, how well do you think that would sit with those that had paid for the rights to run the F1 series, or the TV companies that paid to show the F1 series....

I'm not sure that it is fair to say that they pay "a hell of a lot less". The total prize fund for an SEC round is fairly similar to an SGP round, but the SEC pays points money rather than position money, which is important when you consider that the standard is far lower so the top riders in the SEC get an easier return than they do in the SGP. You might want to look deeper into where Emil is now due to be getting his serious regular money from and consider how that financial source is related to the SEC series....

Rory has British ancestry, is married to a Brit and lives in Britain. If, and it is a very big IF, he chose to apply for British citizenship, I would have no problem with him being considered for a place in the British SWC side if he declared that he was interested in racing in the SWC for Britain. As Cj69 has mentioned, there are a few leaps being taken here as a few of those things have so far not happened and so it's all fairly irrelevant... Of course, maybe Rory is just getting himself prepared to race as a Scot once independence is declared

It's an interesting scenario. Obviously the financial problems have been caused by his Polish club's disgraceful attitude towards the sad events of last year and their attempts to save some money out of them. I do worry about those advising Emil at the moment whilst he allegedly looks to stabilise the financial position he has been put into by Polish speedway. From all that we know about his past, it is hard to imagine that his Father would have advised him to take the path that he is apparently taking this season and I hope that Emil doesn't live to regret following the advice that he is now receiving. I could now be flippant and mention that it isn't the first time in recent years that a major SGP contender has decided to step back from the series due to their Polish club, but I am not sure that anyone else has the same regard for PePe as I have