Interested in the various responses to Nick Jeffries message.
I for one thought the racing this year was excellent (with little or no factory support!)but am disappointed to see the demise of the lightweight TT (125/400 class) along with 250's.
The TT appears to be going solely along the route of production based/road bike based racing with superbikes, 600 and superstock as the only solo classes. Atleast with the old senior classes there was the option for some varied machines - eg R71 raced by Dave MM this year , Steve Linsdals hub centre steered special the voxan, RC30 etc. Correct me if I am wrong but for Superbike all bikes need to be homologated and it is likely that the variety of bikes racing will be greatly reduced - the races will become the sole domain of the big 4 jap road bikes (someone might race a ducati again), 600s can also race in the senior I think.
I hope my reading of the rules is wrong or the organisers have a change of heart and allow some more varied machines to race - I for one dont want to only watch jap 600's & 1000's all week (I know they will always be in the majority)- at least there was the option of some varied bikes in 2004.
The 400/125 demise can be explained in various ways by various people - depending on what rumour you listen to - I for one cant see practice sessions being justified as the main reason - there was no problem this year or previous years with split sessions.
At least they have left the chairs alone!