False dawn

I do think that the exact nature of the offence and the determination of the punishment are of legitimate public interest. Edit: On reflection, there could be medical reasons as to why some of the details are confidential. An individual's medical condition and prescribed medication are not for public consumption.

Yep. In official speak, a licence is suspended because at the end of the specified period, it is reinstated. However, there may also be an appeals process which Ben may or may not take advantage of. But given that if successful he would probably only get his licence back for the close season, it hardly seems likely. He may wish to clear his name, but there would probably be extra costs involved.

Given the severity of the ban (or not, actually) I guess the story about too many or the wrong type of pain killers was accepted. Only a guess mind, but seems to fit the facts.

I admit to being an out and out nerd when it comes to speedway stats. But this whole subject of averages is like a black art.

Who's dragging what out? Ben can't ride till March, then he gets his licence back. End of.

I'm no expert, but it seems clear that riders wish to run their rear tyres at as low a pressure as possible. 6 psi has been mentioned and this, to me, seems an extremely low value. If the rules don't prescribe a minimum pressue and a low pressure gives you more grip (which makes intuative sense) who's to say some riders aren't sneaking down to even lower pressures? For sure, the slow mos reveal significant distortion of tyres including the sidewalls. Spin a tyre at high speed, whilst cornering with little air in it and you would appear to be asking for trouble. Do that on shale that is sharp edged in nature (not to mention nuts and bolts from previous stock car meetings - not relevant to Peterborough I know, but is with some other tracks) and you might just get the odd catastrophic failure. We did have a "one edge per meeting" rule a few years ago, did we not? That went out of the window (with the current tyres) when a tyre run on the same edge for all of one meeting was found to be unusable when turned. Now we're talking about two tyres per meeting (albeit only at one track thus far). That's a four fold increase in usage; four edges per meeting. And that's from a tyre that's reported to be more expensive than previous makes. I'm happy for anyone to refute any of this.

I can make my own mind up as to what is fair. I participate on this forum, but the members don't tell me what to think. I'm happy to debate issues and can be pursuaded by rational argument. But to suggest that a few loud voices form my opinon for me is insulting. Indeed, such "loud voices" are more likely to make me firmly fixed in my own opinions. To convince you further, I frequently attend speedway meetings and talk to many fans, home and away. I also regularly attend supporters club meeting and there engage not only with fellow fans but honoured guests, such as riders (former and current), promoters and other influential leaders in our sport. Please be careful when you say I "have no way of knowing if it’s a popular rule or not".

Or, dare I say, a second half?

The rules are quite clear. That doesn't make them fair, sensible or popular.

Well any team that scores 45 points and goes home with zero league points has to feel gutted, almost cheated, may I say. On the subject of the scoring system overall, the system immediately prior to the introduction of this super heat may be more complicated than the aggregate point idea. However, I always felt that despite the slight difficulty for the "uninitiated", it was a very fair system. The aggregate point system is simpler, but the two teams that compete in the "second leg" could easily be a totally different groups of riders (new signings, guests, heavens forbid, etc.) and it could be weeks (or even months) between the two legs. For me, it's a case of, it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Would anyone be amazed if Belle Vue realise the double booking and postpone the British Final?

I think they've all got balls (big ones actually) so that won't work.

Are you going for a record of how many posts you can quote in a single post?

Bloody dogs life, eh? Edit: Good luck to Swindon. I have happy memories of many visits to the Abbey and look forward to future speedway matches there. I've found it very hard to follow the twists and turns of the story at Brandon. And believe me, I've tried. Trying to unravel the complications surrounding the Swindon stadium is beyond me. I really hope it can have a happy outcome.

I hope he is. Because I'd have him back at Leiccester in a heartbeat.

You're not wrong. But some of us wish to put our proverbial arm round the lad. Those close to him have said that his head's not in the right place and i guess it can't help being constantly compered to his brother. He is clearly a better rider at Championship level than his current form suggests. Come on Joe, we know you have it in you.

In 2020, as we had no league racing, me my racing buddy went to several British Youth Championship meetings. And we both agreed that consistently the 250 class was the most enjoyable and exciting to watch.

Was thinking of going (starting from the Birmingham area) but I'll be taking an empty car. Anyone else fancy going and sharing petrol costs?

Boy, does that bring back some memories. Looks like speedway could be run there.

That goes for any team at any track

Permanently or as a guest?

ebay.au might realise you a couple of dollars. But I wouldn't hold your breathe. Maybe in another 94 years!

I think we have to bang the drum on all the social media platforms asking for the truth of why this meeting was abandoned. We can speculate endlessly about tyre quality, engine performance, track surface etc. But until the truth is made known, we have no chance of seaking a real solution.

But still it gets worse. Brian Karger invents a new fancy ignition box. Programmable with different engine mapping settings no doubt. Anders Thomsen is the "guinea pig" and wins a GP using it (shades of Egon Muller, eh?). Virtually everyone in the pits, 2 GPs later, has one. Now those of us that have been around a while, will not find any of the above very surprising. What did take me back was Kelvin (or was it Chris?) saying in commentary that the pits were full of these boxes the night before, i.e. on the 250s in the SGP3 Final.

Thanks Iain. I was wrong (again) which is becoming a habit on here for me. It wasn't GBSpeedway, however. It took GBSpeedway 10 days to report Dan's Cardiff victory. However, The Official British Speedway Twitter feed, as detailed above, has coverage. I'm going to stop posting.