Good post by Don and Peter who describes racing on the course years ago exactly as it was. Thirty years ago Easter Monday at Oulton Park I had a conversation with others and Kenny Roberts about the benefit of having a Maxton framed OW31 for Charlie Williams as opposed to the standard TZ750 all of our 250s and 350s were convertd straigt out of the crates.

Roberts made the comment that "it does not matter what you do to them they are so fast there are only half a dozen people in the world who can use all the power and ride one to use all the power".

The OW31 was used at the NW200 but not at the TT Charlie would not race it and opted for the 350 Maxton Yamaha in the 1000 Classic finishing 2nd behind Grant on the 750 Kawasaki.

Now we encouraging indeed even pursuing newcomers with little or no roads experience and very little practice by comparison with years ago to lap at 110mph to qualify, the pressure to go 100% and far beyond their course knowledge and ability from their first practice lap must be immense on 200mph Superbikes even the best top riders are almost shaking out of control on some parts of the course.

With the amount of practice years ago the first three or four sessions were used by most to build up speed get 'roads fit' and set up machines and the time for fast laps came midweek or Thursady afternoon.

There also seems to be an obsession thhat new faster lap records are an obsession ad must be set at all costs when the it used to be goo sense to win at the slowest possible speed, now we are in a position race laps are reduced from six to four because of the mortality rate when not so long ago the prouction race was ten laps.

There has to be a lmit as to how much power can b put down on thethe ro and speeds that can be safely achieved on public roads and in recent years newcomers appear to me to be the ones most vulnerable.

I know I have said it before but I remain convinced the gateway to the TT s through the MGP.