No Brakes, No Fear...

The 2014 FIM Speedway Grand Prix season promises to provide an exciting conclusion, with just five rounds left.  Reigning Champion, Britain's Tai Woffinden currently leads the pack, but only three points clear of American Greg Hancock.  The top ten is completed by two Australians, two Poles, two Danes, a Swede, and a Slovenian.  A truly international sport, as you can see, speedway is still regarded historically as something very "British".

Sadly, the sport has been in decline in the UK for several years, and is actually unknown to a large number of modern-day Britons.  This includes the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who recently flew back from Poland with a large crowd of speedway fans (it did give us some good publicity, though).  I will now provide something of an insight into my favourite sport.

Not to be confused with the general term speedway as used by Americans and Australians (used to describe any motorsport raceway, and the associated sports), there is a specific sport known to the world as "speedway".  Undoubtedly the most specialised form of motorsport, the machinery possesses a number of peculiarities, not necessarily obvious to outsiders.

For a start, it is a motorcycle sport.  The engines are four-valve, single-cylinder 500cc units.  Nothing unusual so far...

This is where it gets weird :
1) The engines run on methanol
2) There are no gears
3) There are no brakes

Races are held over four laps (anti-clockwise) with four riders on a shale-surfaced oval track (usually between 250 and 400 metres in lap length), and the bikes are fitted with a very small fuel tank, designed to hold pretty much only the methanol needed for the one race.

Track sizes, shapes, and surfaces vary greatly.  With no gearbox, this could be an issue.  Therefore, certain gearings are chosen for certain conditions by fitting different rear sprockets.  As track conditions can change during the course of a meeting, it can be necessary to switch sprockets between races.

As I said, there are no brakes; the only controls a rider has are a throttle and a clutch.  Bikes are basically bump-started, and the actual race begins from a standing start, by dropping the clutch.  It sounds strange, but due to the compression of a speedway engine, the bikes accelerate quicker than a Formula 1 car!

While it is tough to pinpoint the exact birth of the sport (it derives from a number of dirt-track events around the world in the early 1900's), it really evolved in Australia during the 1920's.  The sport was introduced to Great Britain in the late 1920's, although again, there are various claims for the first official meeting.  Starting off as a series of individual events and two rider challenges (known as match races), league racing was introduced in 1929.  Yes, that is another thing that makes speedway unique; it involves team racing (and not just riders on the same team gaining points).  Leagues around the world race two against two (two home riders, two away riders) per race.

The fact that league racing was introduced in the UK is a large part of Britain's claim to be the home of organised speedway.  Today, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia and the Czech Republic all have well-run leagues, with Poland and Sweden providing the highest quality of competition.  In the 1960's and 70's, speedway was the second most popular spectator sport in Britain behind football.  Top riders were celebrities, speedway stories were always in the newspapers, and it became a regular item on British TV.

One of the strange things is that, more than any other motorcycle sport, speedway really developed into a family hobby.  It doesn't really attract bikers and petrolheads.  In fact, my parents met at Wimbledon speedway, and was really born into the sport.  I was just three weeks old when I attended my first meeting, and although I obviously don't remember anything about that, some of my very earliest childhood memories were from speedway.  I still retain a huge interest in the sport, and now consider myself an amateur historian.

The first World Championship Final was held at London's Wembley Stadium in 1936.  The World Championship continued on a qualification system, building up to a one-night final, until 1995; that was when the Grand Prix system was introduced.

Although the speeds attained are not as great as those in other forms of motorcycle racing, speedway is a very dangerous sport.  There have been many fatalities over the years, and I actually have a website dedicated to those who are no longer with us.  You can check that out at Speedway In Memoriam.