You right about the number of laps...........
I manged 26 practise laps one year but now.............that number is way down.
Currently all you need to quailfy is 5 laps with one under the quailfying time..........I think newcomers need 6.
Sometimes I get the feeling that 5 laps of practise is a target to be achieved rather than a bare minimum



Very good fitz :wink:

My problem is the shadows will have moved since then

Nick has a big advantage over me as well as knowing his way round he can talk his way round as well..............there are many who can do the latter. But not so many who are trying to do the former. And even fewer (Nick is one) who can do both. :wink:

I personally believe that newcomers to the TT with NO course experiance should be restricted to the number of races they can enter. This would then give them a comfortable learning curve on a machine they would know well by the end of the week.

I think the problem is that too many people bring several bikes with them to try to do every race as they think this will help them learn the course. But causes more problems with qualification set up and also the difficulty of having to do two different sessions on two totally different machines with different characteristics of power, speed and also handling on the same night, to get the times and laps in.

Maybe keeping them to a single machine may teach them more, but then would they come for just one ride? Who knows... but I guess they wouldn't.

I rode in the first Newcomers MGP in 1978.

There was no way that the Club would give me another ride that year, and I had no argument with that, for reasons well expressed by David C.

Nowadays, Newcomers can have three rides, one each day, no problem.

I do not think that this is a good thing.