Seems rather a pointless move to me. The Manx as an amateur event is always likely to have a wider spread of ability than the TT. Effective rider seeding means that the chances of slow and fast riders being on the same piece of road during the race will be minimal. My personal experience is the seeding does work quite well (last year I hardly saw another rider during my races!) and this could be further enhanced if riders were started in order of their qualifying speeds (with the caveat wet/dry practice could influence the order).

I don't see any real advantage in this whereas it is quite probable that some riders who would have met the old speed-based criteria could fail to meet the new comparitive ones. It's an awful lot of money and time to come over and risk not riding. Just when I thought the riders were starting to be treated better as well...