The Sheene scene

After attending the recent Barry Sheene Festival of Speed I have some comments that perhaps could be shared with fellow readers. On the positive side: The racing events were closely co-ordinated with only small delays between races due to track maintenance or recovery actions. There was an open and friendly atmosphere in the pits area which enabled good interaction between the spectators, competitors and officials. The track marshalling and race control was efficient enabling a very full race programme to be run with few problems. I would like to point out some issues and offer some suggestions which would enhance the racing activities – especially from a spectator viewpoint:

The entry point was an absolute shambles on the Saturday morning when we arrived (by car) at 10 am. The traffic was queued up for quite a distance. It took nearly 45 minutes to get through the entry point, due to the fact that there were only 2 ticket sellers, both of whom were servicing only one lane into the grounds, and there was much confusion between spectators who had pre-paid tickets and those who were seeking gate entry tickets. I’d suggest that more ticket sales staff appropriately positioned would have sped up the entry process. Once inside I was pleased to see that programmes were available and for only $5.00 appeared to be comprehensively prepared and professionally presented. In the programme there was a full description of the many classes and who was riding what, with number and sponsor detail included; additionally there was a listing of the many events which were scheduled for the 3 days. However, there was no actual list of races with the entrants, as is normally the case. I understand that programmes have to be compiled and printed by

a certain date and that there are usually (always?) late entries/scratchings. This makes it difficult to compile a 100% accurate programme but I would have thought that an event of this size could put up a “Late Entry/Scratching” board, perhaps at the pits area; this would allow spectators to update their programme (a bit like horse racing) accordingly. Indeed, I spent most of my time during each race vainly scanning through the many pages of riders in the various classes, to find out who was riding what machinery and to determine who had come in which placing. This was compounded by the many bikes which (although were in different classes) had the same number. I understand that the numbers are colour coded for classes but when they flash past it’s hard enough to get the number let alone the colour of the plate! I did enjoy the racing but was very frustrated with the delay at getting into the meeting, also by not being able to follow the riders’ progress. A small amount of attention to the entry point staffing and the programme material would have made the event much more enjoyable (for my brother and me at least). Bill Eales Nowra, NSW Bill. I know the organisers of the meeting, PCRA, are aware of the gate entry problems, which come down to the venue leaseholders, the ARDC. I believe discussions are taking place to rectify the situation. I agree regarding the difficulty in following riders/event through the programme. There must be a solution to this but it is compounded these days by the myriad classes on the race card. Let’s hope something can be worked out in the way the printed programme is presented, as it certainly is frustrating. – Ed