Good post David

Anyway:

You dont need to buy a Paton, MV, Super Manx/G50 to have a lot of horsepower! When my dad rode Dave Nourish's weslakes we regularly got through the pit lane speed trap at over 124mph, which is better than any single and more than comparible with a Paton. I'm not at liberty to disclose how much power we had then but it was more than enough to lap at 105mph prior to the changes to windy corner and brandish!

You dont need horsepower to do a fast lap! The fastest lap my dad did on the Greeves was 98.96MPH which was in 1997, at that time it produced 33BHP on a good day, if you dont believe me I can show you the graphs! He also did 99.99mph on an almost standard mkIII seeley G50 and 98.6mph on a seeley goldstar with a 4 speed gearbox! I dare say all these lap times would be good enough to get a replica on any year in the history of the classic manx grand prix.

I still cannot understand why people think the replica rules should be changed, it is an award to prove that you lapped within a certain percentage of the winner of the race in those conditions on that day, if you changed the way it was allocated you might as well call it something else. If you only gave silver reps to the top 25% only 9 people would have won them last year whilst 14 managed to with the current rules! In 2005 it was relatively easy to win a replica in 2008 it was more difficult in 1996 even harder! It's swings and round abouts!