HenryW

Assumibng the 2 GP rider rule stays, surely Scotty would be better going elsewhere, unless he is going to be paid even when he isn't racing. You can't imagine him getting too many outings...or is Tony planning to take it very easy in his final year?

Middle of May...If past form is anything to go by, Wanda should just be about to close down.

Can I assume from this that you will be back in Bydgoszcz next year? You were missed this year! Should probably also mention for British fans thinking of flying from Stansted, in case it hasn't been said elsewhere, Ryanairs flights to Bydgoszcz for GP weekend have now been released...

I seem to recall that the underground car park was exactly the problem. It was the football stadium that they were considering, and Prince Albert was on board after visiting the first staging of the Cardiff GP, but the pitch at the stadium couldn't take the weight of a track being laid on it because of the way it is constructed with a car park underneath it. Or at least, that's the way I remember it. It seems far more sensible to take the series into Nations that already have a good speedway base. Latvia is a good start...hopefully Russia next!

I was hoping to tempt Tommy into making that comment, but his confidence in his side is admirable!

That team put together by Ostrow has to worry you slightly, does it not? Any thought that Polish clubs might stick together and not hire too many foreign riders has clearly been blown out the water by this team! Do you expect all of the foreign riders to race together, ie Max, Karlsson, Ferjan, Risager and Moller all in the one team, or will they just use a couple for each match and pick them depending on the strength of opposition? Following that question...who provides the money for Ostrow? I presume they must have a good sponsor as PK and Max don't usually come cheap!!

I can't argue with this summation by you. His previous GP performances have been a bit like his Ipswich form this year, very hit and miss....with far too many misses to be acceptable. However, I do genuinely think that the current format could be better for him than the previous knock-out one. He appears to be a rider who suffers a little under pressure, so having 5 races to deliver could be easier for him than having only 2. I hope (and expect) to see him making a good few semi-final appearances next season. Of course, he still has to deal with the one-off pressure once he makes the semi-finals....

Whilst I can understand your frustration at Hans missing out, I don't think that PePe should be the target of that frustration. In the UK, at Ipswich, Hans has been better than PePe, but in the other big leagues of Poland and Sweden, Hans has been inferior to PePe.....not to mention the fact that Poland were always going to get another entry to the series, and PePe is easily the best Pole outside of the series. What I can't understand is why Hans has been dropped for Puk...that's where the real debate should be.

Jeez, Subedei, you really do have something against the Brits don't you? "No possible justification for the inclusion of Nicholls....at the expense of Andersen." What about the fact that Scott finished 3 places higher in the series than Hans this year. Is that not reason enough? Richardson's inclusion is a little more contentious but he finished higher than Hans in a single GP this year and had a fantastic SWC. Those could be seen as justifications, even without considering the highly publicised problems he had early in the season which impacted his results. After the initial 4 choices, who were apparently easily agreed upon, it appears that the final 3 places have been given to the best 3 wildcards from this year......simple as that.

The remaining places will not be announced until after the FIM Conference at the end of October.

A different angle on the crash which shows the initially clash more clearly can be viewed at http://speedway.ru/video/2zaezd.wmv

Good man, doing my work for me like that

Not sure if this is an accurate quote from Ole or not, but I'm sure he considers Rune as Norwegian, just as most speedway fans do....so I wouldn't rule Rune out just yet. He certainly deserves it based on his Polish and Swedish league form this year. I'm also pretty sure that Rune could, in fact, become a Norwegian again within a few days if he wanted

Absolutely no surprise in the 4 riders named tonight. I had them picked as "bankers" after the Bydgoszcz GP. Three of them were certs before that meeting and on that night Lee clinched his place. He had a great World Cup and then followed it up with a 2nd place in Bydoszcz, a 2nd place that is as good as a win....we all know Tomek will win in Bydgoszcz You also have to remember that Lee had a bad start to the season due to mechanical woes, not to mention so much illness during the season. The last 3 places are the ones that will be interesting. On form from the 3 big leagues, Holta should be the first pick of the current non-GP riders. Hans N deserves a place in my book, but if he is in, you need to make a choice between Zagar, PePe, Kasprzak and Kolodziej (who apparently has Ole's support) for a last place. That makes things look a little dodgy for Hans, until you consider that he is a Dane and BSI have cash invested in the Danish GP....in which case Holta's place looks dodgy, and if he missed out it would be absolutely criminal in my view. Will be very interesting to see who makes the cut.

Your previous statement was that "..the beauty of the old one-off championship was that it did throw up some unlikely qualifiers and even winners on occasion." That doesn't sound like the words of someone who really wants to see the very best rider taking home the title. However, assuming that you are in agreement with me on this point....I put forward the suggestion that I would prefer to see the riders chosen based on league form. That opens the qualifying to any rider capable of holding down a team place in the major speedway leagues but reduces the risk of top riders missing out due to a mechanical defect or injury at the wrong time.

Maybe that's why you and I disagree on this discussion, because we disagree on something as fundametal as this. I want to see the best speedway rider in the World crowned as World Champion. You obviously don't view that as the priority. Am I missing something? Are league meetings not taking place in real life? The league averages don't stay the same from year to year. If a young rider is good enough to contend for the World title, he will be good enough to deliver week in week out in the much easier league events. If someone isn't good enough to be a top rider in the league, he certainly shouldn't be a contender for World Champion, IMHO. I think that with his league form PC would have been in the series in 1976. Whether he would have been able to win over a 9 round series is another matter. Of course, I think that had BSI been doing their picking back in '76 they would have had him in anyway! BTW : Subedei, I think last time I checked Jarek was running around a 9 point average in Sweden, but I could be wrong.

I agree that the standard of competition is very different between GP and League meetings, but the best riders in the World do tend finish at the top of the league averages. I did actually suggest in my original post taking the riders form from only two leagues, so if they choose miss one out, that would be fine Indeed you are right, but how does that differ from holding qualifying rounds? Those have to be held the year before as well. The wildcard place is there for "home track heros" and "form horses".

I agree that I would prefer to see the riders for the series decided on the track but, as I say, the one off qualifiers just don't cut it for a place in a GP series. Basically a whole lot of good speedway was wasted by having the two qualifiers in the series this year, and I mean as little disrespect as possible to the two guys who got in, but they just weren't ready for this level of competition over the course of this season. Maybe BSI could offer places based on averages in the 3 major speedway leagues. Tell riders that they have to race in at least two of the leagues to be considered and their best two averages are taken into account to get the riders for the next season. That would mean that it was really decided on the track over the course of a whole season...A perfect solution in my mind, but I can't quite see them buying into that idea!

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. When I travel to see a GP, what I really want to see are the 16 best riders racing in it. The wildcard allows for track specialists, so you are then looking at the 15 best. Qualifiers don't provide the top riders due to the vagaries of the one off nature of the qualifying meetings. As long as the best riders are selected for the other positions, I am happy. As for whether the riders Subedei listed deserve another chance, I would say that they do as long as they are consistently showing themselves to be in the top 15 in the World. I see no reason for pushing a rider out just because he finishes between 9th and 15th in the series if he is clearly better in other competitions than the riders that are outside the series. So, just for the sake of it, I will list who I think are the best 15 riders in the World. There is nothing scientific to my choices, just a gut feel from looking at the various riders results in the major leagues. Leigh Adams, Hans Andersen, Jason Crump, Tomasz Gollob, Jarek Hampel, Greg Hancock, Rune Holta, Andreas Jonsson, Peter Karlsson, Scott Nicholls, Bjarne Pedersen, Nicki Pedersen, Piotr Protasiewicz, Tony Rickardsson, Ryan Sullivan Absolutely no chance of that being the GP field for next year though.

Just to clarify, at no point did I say that there was any reason why Jason shouldn't help him. I actually thought that Jason deserved a lot of credit for what he appeared to do for Leigh, but it was completely missed by everyone at Sky!

I had problems running the videos direct from the site, but saving them to disk worked fine. Maybe I'm a little biased, but heat 10 definitely looks like Jacek's fault to me even with the dodgy camera angle. I agree that heat 15 was definitely PePe's own fault. I would disagree with Dekker's suggestion that he "played for the dive" though. Looked like he was forced to go wide so tried to run right to the fence for some extra drive and just lost control and had to bail out.

He was given the best gate position by Jason as well, though.

Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that. Great bit of "team riding" from Jason to make sure that Leigh got his rostrum placing. I actually think that if Leigh had made a mess of the last half lap, Jason would have pulled out to let him have the 2nd place, he certainly spent enough time checking on Leigh to make sure he was still right behind him!

Not an entirely unexpected result, but not one that Bydgoszcz would have been hoping for. I think Tarnow have done enough to make sure of their victory now. Not unexpectedly, the real difference between the teams was at the bottom of the teams. Kolodziej and Rempala hitting paid 23 compared to Klecha and Buczkowski's 5. I'm looking forward to hearing what the Bydgoszcz fans have to say about the meeting, but it sounds like PePe was very harshly done by, at least in his first exclusion. From the report I have seen, PePe was going around the outside of Jacek Gollob who shut the door on him causing both riders to come off at high speed, with the Bydgoszcz man being controversially excluded. The second fall was after Tomek Gollob dived inside of PePe in heat 16. I haven't seen any suggestion of whether Gollob actually hit him or not, maybe Mateusz or Lawrence could clarify.

Just thought I would update this topic after the final GP of the season. Chances are that I have made loads of mistakes putting this together, but I believe that the following are the points scored by the GP riders this year in all the regular 20 heats. For the top 15, the brackets show how their position differs from their actual final championship position. 1 T.Rickardsson 108 (=) 2 J.Crump 91 (=) 3 N.Pedersen 85 (+1) 4 L.Adams 83 (-1) 5 G.Hancock 78 (=) 6 A.Jonsson 73 (+2) 7 S.Nicholls 72 (+2) 8 T.Gollob 71 (-1) 9 B.Pedersen 64 (-3) 10 H.Andersen 58 (+2) 11 A.Lindback 55 (-1) 12 J.Hampel 50 (-1) 13 R.Sullivan 45 (+1) 14 L.Richardsson 44 (-1) 15 T.Chrzanowski 27 (=) Others K.Bjerre 12 (2 rounds) S.Anderson 5 (1 round) R.Povazhny 4 (1 round) Wild Cards M.Zagar 14 (2 rounds) P.Protasiewicz 11 N.K.Iversen 7 R.Holta 6 J.Davidsson 4 D.Norris 4 K.Kasprzak 4 A.Dryml 3