Interesting viewpoint from Nick. I can certainly agree that from a marshalling point of view there were significantly fewer people out in the mornings than evenings, and I always made a point of getting out to marshal in the morning if I wasn't riding. I can't comment on the getting to work angle but none of the regular marshals I met seemed to see this as a problem. Police overtime? Have they not opted out of the 60 hour limit? Again I never met a cop who was averse to a spot of easy OT. Or was it the cost of the overtime? Perhaps we should give them all speed guns.

Lastly the advisability of riding a fast bike on a cold morning. A difficult thing to avoid, in the TT or MGP as weather conditions are rarely ideal. Perhaps making the morning sessions untimed, as they did at first, would remove some of the need for speed. I know from bitter experience there is A LOT of pressure to get your laps in as soon and as fast as possible early in the week because if you lose a session or 2 through engine trouble, bad weather, etc you can really struggle to get enough laps in by the end of the week - especially if you are running more than 1 bike. I know people who have failed to qualify simply because mechanical gremlins at key times limited their laps and there are now only around half as many sessions available. Indeed I could suggest that increasing the pressure in qualifying is something of a retrograde safety step.

Unfortunately we have been our own worst enemies here. Many people didn't bother with the morning sessions (I always found them a surreal experience, another unique IoM tradition lost forever) so with declining numbers of riders out no wonder others lost interest, until eventually it became an opportunity to avoid the disruption to the dear old financial sector commute.

My view, they should bring back morning sessions and make the completion of at least one compulsory for qualification. Increasing the number of sessions not only allows riders more opportunity to familiarise themselves with the track but also reduces the pressure to try too hard in the evenings to get the qualifying laps in. It's a safety thing.