Ah - a "programme filler" class, before production racing took over and pretended to be the only form of real racing! (Cynical comment, and yes, I enjoyed some Production races in the Island and on short-circuits :wink: )
I think the time is rapidly approaching, if it is not here already, to seriously ask if the races should be dropped, and just remember the 100 years that went before.
If things have "progressed" so far that the organisers are frightened to allow racing unless there is virtually perfect vision on all points of the island, frightened to let spectators near a large percentage of the course, support for marshalling is at best borderline, in the case of the TT it is impossible to tell one race from another, costs for attending have spiralled - both for riders and spectators, and the business of the host country has changed so much that there is little toleration for the disruption then I believe the races are time-expired.
Is it not better to be able to say "I remember the TT and the MGP" rather than "I remember when they were a really great event, not like they are now" ?
An annual festival with short-circuit races for Classics (preferably on a new dedicated facility, not the frightening Billown roads which were always marginal on safety for a massed start race) would surely be a success, and produce a facility for other motor sport, without closing roads. Look at the Ascari facility in Spain - a superb circuit, funded by rich businessmen, with an improving list of facilities such as golf course, country club, hotel either being built or already there. Surely something like that would bring the Isle of Man closer to the 20th, if not the 21st century?
Road racing can continue to be better catered for in Ireland, until they too become too scared of allowing racing in anything other than perfect conditions - racing in rain, wind, high temperatures and so on has always been part of the test. Soon there will only be indoor arenas with a decibel limit of 50 or 60, electric non-polluting engines, with riders looking more like american football players with so much padding that they cannot hurt themselves.
Tin-hat on, trench dug, head down!