Dave Wayne

F2 / Saloon / Banger fans see their admission prices put up by a couple of quid whenever F1 is on at the same meeting in order to pay the increased costs of staging F1, so I think it is a bit unfair for F1 fans to have a dig on the rare occasion that they are expected to give a little more towards the prize fund for an F2 championship meeting,

How can the rule be in place if the system for policing it has not yet been introduced ?

Bangers might be a bit slow.

Glad to see I am not the only person with that opinion.

We all have them and when things are being thrown at you occasionally you throw them back. Not my best day on the forum and it will be my last for a while as I get wound up by people who post negatives without checking or in the knowledge that the thing they want is about to be posted. I started it just before noon today and I checked before I did. It was 3 days before the meeting and there was nothing on your website other than a start time. Apologies for not being psychic and therefore not having the knowledge that what I was asking for was about to be posted. I don't use facebook so have no idea if there was or wasn't anything being said on there. Can't really understand why it wound you up. As far as I am aware you are a promoter, so surely you should be promoting your meeting ? I know you got away without releasing any advance info for meetings at Coventry as you knew you would get a good turnout of both drivers and spectators so you didn't have to work for it. However, now you are 'on tour' it's a different game altogether and you actually need to try and entice people to your meetings. Have a look around at some other websites (Startrax, Autospeed, etc.) to see how it should be done. They have advance information for their meetings weeks before. If I am honest, I am not generally swayed by bookings lists, weather, etc., I enjoy stock car racing and get to as many meetings as I can, but there are others who are not as committed/stupid as me and they are the ones you should be working hard to attract. Or maybe the lack of promotion of your meetings is your 'get out clause' and the fact the fans aren't backing you gives you a good excuse to not bother with a new track ?

Well this meeting is being pushed isn't it ? Apologies for the negativity but with 3 days to go all we know is the price and the start time. Maybe somebody needs to point out to JH that there is more to promoting than just sticking a meeting on and expecting people to turn up.

There is, but he is currently out of racing with a broken back sustained at the July Mildenhall speedweekend.

F1 Shoot Out round 3 plus F2 NATIONAL SERIES ROUND 1 Just for those who might not be aware !!

Don't they sometimes add non semi finalists onto the back of the grid in wcqr points scoring order to boost the numbers up ?

Cowdenbeath are running an F2 meeting on F1 WF night Hardly likely to impact on the World Final crowd nearly 500 miles away though is it ?

Everyone seems to be forgetting 2 things when talking about the need for meetings this weekend. 1) There is a "gentleman's agreement" between F1 and F2 not to run a meeting to clash with each other's World Final. 2) The original plan was for a Sunday meeting including F1 as part of the F2 World Final weekend but this was dropped when the track became unavailable as the priority was to give the travelling F2s and Saloons 2 days of racing.

I am surprised that Startrax don't have more complaints of false advertising. The poster shown above which is taken from their own website clearly shows ministox as racing, and the preview details which Carl has quoted goes on to say "If none of that is enough then we have the Junior end of Stock Car racing, demonstrating Britain very much has got talent as these whizz kids up to 16 race in mini body shelled space framed 1000cc stock cars at high speed and again, full contact.", yet the format doesn't include ministox and the fixture is not on the ministox website !! Surely it can't be that hard to keep things updated ?

56 cars is a great turnout but with 24 in the semi it raises the question as to whether we have 2 potentially tame 16 car support heats or 1 action packed 32 car heat. I know which option I and many others would prefer but what does the rulebook say ? I am fairly sure I have heard it quoted before that 51 cars or more has to be 3 heats but does this still apply when 1 of the races has more than a third of the cars as in this case ? If a few cancel and the 51+ rule applies then we could end up with 2 × 13/14 car support heats.

Track was changed to shale in 1997, the move to Swaffham for 1 year was in 1999, F1s were added for both days from 2001. Even after that, while the track was still shale, bookings for F2s were restricted. I was helping out a white top from the West Midlands who raced nearly every midweek meeting one season in the early 2000s but was refused a booking for this meeting as the priority was given to 'long distance' travelers and red/blue tops, so I know for a fact that F2 numbers were restricted while the track was still shale. Also, while I respect the fact that F2 numbers on tarmac are not great at many domestic meetings, the formula is still very well supported for the bigger events, and the fact that a current F2 driver who is not on the booking list for the weekend has posted to say there is a big reserve list confirms this.

http://www.briscaf2.com/content/news/2017-uk-speed-weekend.ashx Suggests that F2 bookings would be restricted.

Weren't the F1s added due to falling numbers of the other formulae?They were added when Long Eaton closed as prior to that LE always ran on the 2nd Saturday of the month, but for the first 3 years only ran on the Saturday night (1999 speedweekend was at Swaffham).I dont think there was a major fall in numbers in the 2 main formulae, but shale didn't suit the traditional '3rd formula' which was Stock Rods one day and ORC ministox the other. I know for a fact that in the early 2000s when F1 became a fixture for the weekend that low grade F2 drivers who were Skegness regulars were refused bookings as the priority for bookings was given to higher grades and long distance travellers. Pit space is the biggest factor in the number of bookings that can be taken for the weekend, so the removal of the F1 transporters would allow unrestricted bookings for F2 and Saloons while still leaving space for a 3rd formula such as national ministox. I think it is wrong that bookings are restricted for formulae competing for a championship - imagine the uproar on here if they did that to F1s in May !!

Good to see that the F1s have been restricted in numbers. It is a championship weekend for F2 and Saloons so they should always take priority.Prior to F1 being added to this weekend it used to attract about 120 F2s but they have had a restriction of around 90 cars in order to accommodate the F1s. Maybe it is time to go back to how it used to be and drop F1 in favour of ministox to allow unrestricted bookings ?

I doubt he would take his place on shale. That's why Team Davidson always have two drivers, so at least one of them will do both surfaces. Luke definitely didn't take his place on the shale semi grid last year. I think he was booked in to race as I seem to recall and then withdrew close to the event.Sheffield is a very different place to Stoke though.Last time there was a semi at Stoke, Luke raced the 318 shale car.

Don't forget that his comeback to F1 all started with a one off WCQR outing at Belle Vue where he scored enough points to qualify for the Birmingham semi and ended up in the Skegness World Final, so he wasn't too worried about taking the place of a 'regular' driver back then.

Being pedantic here Rod, but the 'new' Belle Vue didn't open for stox till 1999 !!

Yes Colin, I believe he has the ex-H231 car.

Just for the record, I never moaned, whinged or complained about the results service or anybody involved in providing it. All I did was made a suggestion as to how it could be made slightly more user friendly for the high percentage of people who now access the internet on the small screen of a smart phone rather than a full size laptop or desktop screen. Apparently, in they eyes of some this makes me a bad person !!

Happy to see sponsors listed. It's all the obscure titles, number of appearances, etc that are clogging the page up.Font size doesn't help either. Looking at today's list on a phone and the first driver fills the screen on his own. Yes I could just scroll past but then I wouldn't know who is there would I ? Maybe it is just me but I think the phrase 'less is more' is quite fitting in this case !!

Is there any chance that the driver lists can be literally just that rather than all the additional details as they are virtually impossible to decipher on a phone screen due to all the unnecessary statistics ?

Is that a suggestion that somebody practising today may have been planning a late entry ?