THE PROBLEM WITH THE CLASSIC RACING WORLD

Dear CR I’d like to voice my opinion on what I have seen during my first visits to what you might call the classic racing world, in the hope that somebody will read this and change. I should explain that I was tempted to actually go to a race or two after firstly picking up your magazine, being encouraged by what the editor was saying about how welcoming the classic racing world was. I raced a few years ago myself, in the 400 class. I wasn’t going to win any championships but I enjoyed it, and gave up because I found the paddock very hostile and closed off. If I didn’t know anybody there I was often met with suspicious and glaring looks from others. So I went to a couple of meetings this year to see if the classic world was more my kettle of fish. It wasn’t and I don’t know what the editor was talking about. I walked around the paddock looking at the bikes and tried to talk to people about them but was met with rudeness and a very closed-off feeling from everyone I saw taking part. I like reading CR but will I be going to anything in classic racing again? No thanks. If I want to feel like I’m watching a clique with its own language then I’ll go to a football match and be miserable with everyone wearing the same colour shirts there. I don’t like cliques or groups of people only there to keep their racing to themselves. Alan Weston Shropshire

Dear Alan I’m so very sorry to read this letter. I’ve chosen to include it on these pages in the hope that others from the racing world will read it and respond to it too. In my experience of both classic and modern paddocks there can be little corners where racers are (rightly) up to their elbows solving problems and sometime they might seem a tad ‘closed off’ whilst they get on with putting a bike right, but this is a way of racing life that I think is pretty normal. Alan, I’m absolutely sure that others will respond to this letter with positivity and offers of showing you more of the plus side of classic racing. I do hope that when they do you can find it in yourself to give it another go. Classic racing and the people involved in it are the very best you’ll find on two wheels. I wish you all the best and plenty of good times in paddocks to come. Tony