Speedway season back on track for now

A threatened drivers' boycott of Tauranga's Baypark speedway appears to have been defused following a decision to rebuild the track.
Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby's announcement follows months of mounting tension among drivers that nothing would change when the new speedway season opened on Labour Weekend.
Mr Crosby, a director of Baypark's governing body Tauranga City Venues (TCVL), said there had been strong concerns about the state of the track and its "raceability".
He said the track needed to be rebuilt for speedway to be successful. It was not a big job and could be done in two or three weeks.
Although the track was unlikely to be rebuilt in time for the season opening, Mr Crosby, a former speedway driver, said TCVL had been in discussion with quarries and other tracks around New Zealand.
Frustration among drivers at the condition of the track, which they blame for damaging cars and causing safety issues, peaked on July 29 when 56 members of the Bay of Plenty Speedway Association voted not to race at Baypark this season if speedway promoter Willie Kay stayed in place.
Mr Kay is responsible for preparing the track for racing, although if the problems went deeper than his surface preparations, it became an issue for the owner of the track, TCVL.
The vote represented 73 per cent of the drivers at the meeting and was described as a "significant" number of Tauranga's speedway drivers by the new club president Bernie Gillon.
Mr Kay responded that the track had been nothing but trouble and the club had been trying to get it replaced for years.
He described the July 29 meeting as a "wind-up" and character assassination, adding that a large number of members had come back to him to say they had regretted going against him.
Mr Kay said his pre-season meetings with the five classes of speedway drivers had been positive.
Letters leaked to the Bay of Plenty Times showed how frustration among speedway drivers led to a round table meeting on April 29 between the association, TCVL, Mr Kay and council chief executive Stephen Town.
On June 11 the speedway association complained to TCVL general manager Ervin McSweeney that Mr Kay had not formally replied to "valid concerns" raised at the meeting.
Mr Kay replied that he had been unable to respond because engineers advising on track issues visited Baypark on June 16 and 17.
In a later letter to Mr McSweeney on July 2, Mr Kay said there was no quick fix and the issues raised needed to be worked through.
A July 30 letter from the then association president Mark Fredericksen to TCVL said Mr Kay was invited to their July 29 meeting but declined to attend.
"As you are aware, the association and its members have been trying to resolve many serious concerns.
"Contrary to his posturing, he (Mr Kay) has been unwilling to work through the issues."
Mr McSweeney responded that such a big fall-off in drivers would not set the scene for a good speedway season but that Mr Kay had a contract to operate speedway at Baypark for the next five years and cancelling the contract was not necessarily a simple matter.
Mr Gillon, a recent appointee onto the board of TCVL, said the class meetings were what they had been trying to achieve since February. He said Mr Kay had taken on board concerns and it was now a case of waiting to see what happened.
"If he honours his commitment to drivers, the problems will go away."
Mr Crosby said that if Baypark won selection for a world speedway motorcycle championship round, a temporary soft track would be laid on top of the new permanent track for cars.