sticky Wrote:As an affirmation of the fact that another grid full of Japanses sports bikes is not necessarily the way forward, the following is an excerpt from a post by a guy who goes by the moniker of Gixer 1 on iomtt.com. It was on a picture thread of mine and I hope he doesn't mind me copying it here:

"...after 10 years of going to the TT, this was my first visit to the manx, and to be honest, if it werent for Stu going, i doubt i would of gone! but it wont be my last visit, and i agree with you 100%, it shouldnt be turned into a TT lite, without the classics it wouldnt be the manx! i doubt even Stu would of got me to go just to see more 4 stroke japs! i only wanted to experience the sound and sight of the classic beasts roaring past, it was brill, sounded like a squadron of lancasters as they neared ballaugh bridge! awesome, long may it continue."

'nuff said.

I don't want to see off the classics. Definately not. It makes the Manx special and is a superb spectacle. I'm thinking more of big proddy bikes in the senior, which is already full of jap fours, to boost entries from people who have that bike already.
Then if the newcomers race is amalgamated into each respective class, it can be replaced by a big classic/forgotten era race.
As I said before, the spectators will come to see the event if its good enough and it is already very good. We just need to make sure we don't go the TT route of running a class then dropping it the year after.
Regarding the TT Course licence farce. The event is already National status so why is this required? If it were a clubman event I could understand the need for proof of ability but the TTCL doen't even do that. It just proves that you turned up 6 times. Then there's the other aspect of machine prep that Shipleymanx mentioned.