This is an excellent thread and the range of ideas and suggestions put forward is exactly what is needed. The exchange of opinions in a healthy debate can only be in the best interests of the Manx - nothing is cast in stone for all time and the MGP cannot be an exception to that maxim.

Having said that, we have all (- both club & riders) come under pressure from circumstances that are outside our control. The practice situation is clearly a very hot topic amongst competitors and there's nothing we'd all like more than extra practice. I suspect that one of the reasons so many riders now enter both the ULWT and the Junior is because it lets you 'double up' on practice. But that is only a flexible response from riders to what is clearly a pressing issue.

It's clear that we're not going to get any more practice sessions. A vociferous element amongst the local population won't tolerate the idea of additional road closures. Just look at the fallout from this year's delayed racing on the Wednesday of race week. Whilst the racing must be partially responsible for the traffic delays, apparently a couple of rather unfortunate traffic accidents compounded the problem substantially. It would be easy to start pointing accusatory fingers at the banking sector but it may be a knee jerk reaction. I marshaled the N/C race last year at Brandish with a bloke who worked for one of the large banks and had come to the Island because he wanted to be involved in the races!

The club also has an enormous task on its hands just getting enough marshals for the existing practice sessions. Employers on the Island are apparently not as willing or as flexible as they once were to release staff for marshalling duties. The insurance-driven environment we're now in means that there's no taking liberties with minimum marshalling levels either. If the TT with its substantially greater clout can't get a Thursday afternoon practice session, we don't have much chance. Morning sessions are obviously completely out of the question in this atmosphere.

The practice situation also has implications for the racing classes that can be accommodated. At the moment we are able to split the racing into 2 sessions along fairly straightforward performance lines. If, as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread, we were to introduce machines that differ substantially in performance, we’d have to further segment practice with the obvious reduction in track time that would entail. Apparently one of the concerns of the ACU is the disparity in performance between machines at opposite ends of the performance spectrum. Whether you or I as competitors are concerned is a moot point – we are beholden to the ACU and its insurers in this respect.

This also affects the problem of what to do about the Newcomers Race. It’s readily apparent that there are serious concerns due to falling numbers of entrants. This year there were only 40 or so starters, which is way below the level considered viable for the continuation of the race. I believe that the threshold for viability is about 70 riders, which clearly is not the case at the moment.

In regards to how to augment or eventually replace the Newcomers Race, a number of people have offered the suggestion of a Forgotten Era race. It’s been pointed out to me by a couple of the classic racers that a TZ350 (say) is by no means a cheap option and the Forgotten Era class doesn’t have a great number of participants in UK circuit racing. That would obviously mean that there’s a limited pool of riders from which to attract an entry at any possible MGP race. The secondary problem here is that if you try to augment the N/C race with an FE race, the ACU probably wouldn’t look favourably on having experienced riders on potentially fairly quick machinery on circuit at the same time as inexperienced newcomers.

My belief is that if, through continued debate, we can garner enough support for constructive ways to augment the present MGP race setup, that is the way to go. The introduction of 650cc twins into the ULWT is one such example. The N/C Race is in trouble, as is the LWT with only 20 entries from 250cc riders and the ULWT 125cc entry. We need to find a racing format that could be used to augment the current level of entrants without driving away any of the existing competitors. This could be Forgotten Era or Mini-Twins or Sound of Thunder. Standing still isn’t an option but we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water.