Street Class and other class issues

Some of you may have read, in the latest BHPC magazine, my proposal for us to introduce a 'Street Class' into our racing series, to encourage the development of practical HPVs. I have no desire to mount a one-man campaign on this issue but if there is significant support for the idea then I will put it forward at the AGM. Do any of you think it's a good idea? The minutiae of the rules area open to discussion, of course. Please bear in mind that the deadline for AGM proposals is this Saturday(!).

I notice that Neil Carter is proposing a Faired Multitrack Class. I haven't heard your full proposal Neil, so apologies if I am misinterpreting it, but the club has not had a Faired-anything Class for many years - we have overall classes, so in the interests of logical consistency you should be proposing overall multitrack and unfaired multitrack classes. As in the overall overall class, this means that the fastest multitrack, faired or unfaired, would win the class (it's worth noting that on Sunday this would have been Lee W, who was unfaired). This seems only fair as, even when I'm riding the streamliner, unfaired riders sometimes beat me and I don't get points for being faired. The same principal could perhaps apply to Sports Class and Street Class (Street Class being overall street-practical and Sports Class unfaired street-practical). If you make the changes to your proposal along these lines, Neil then I, for one, would be happy to support it. It would be nice to see faired Windcheetahs and Davies trikes return to the tracks, as presumably they are presently languishing unused.

I have serious reservations about Mike B's 'Naked Class'. The principal of minimum effort suggests that more people won't even bother with tail-fairings, let alone full fairings, if this class was introduced and it seems ridiculous that we should be effectively discouraging people from fitting streamlining (perhaps we should have a Running Class for people who can't be a#sed to turn up with a bicycle ).

Sorry for another Bird Essay!

GeoffBird wrote: ...we have overall classes...

Er, do we? If, for example, you put a front fairing on a Kingcycle, it takes you from Sports to Open (that's the main reason I haven't got a front fairing). If you put a front fairing on a Ratracer, it moves from Unfaired to Open. Unless you are a Lady or a Junior, in which case you and your machine stay put whatever you do to it.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the only logical classes are person rather than machine-based. We have these to some extent, in that all Ladies compete against other Ladies regardless of what they ride, all Juniors against other Juniors, and so on... maybe all Veterans against other Veterans, one day?

The only meaningful machine-based distinction I can see is between machines which are usable on the public highway, and those which are not; but as has been pointed out before, the distinction is hard to draw (one person's "road-practical" being another's "downright terrifying", even if the machine meets the requirements of the law), and so forms a questionable basis for class division.

Surely creativity is stifled by having any machine-based classes, because there is no point in innovating beyond the confines of the class you find your machine in... whereas a rider-based system would tend to advance the breed more rapidly by fostering a technological free-for-all?