ON THE MONEY

On the Money On the Money

Only three months after I waxed lyrical about the Isle of Man TT’s very successful post-Covid regeneration by the Manx government’s motorsports unit, slagging the traditional follow-up Mountain Course event in late August became unavoidable. Almost everything about it went off like a damp squib.

Abandoning the Classic TT moniker and a return to Manx Grand Prix branding for a more balanced mixture of heritage and modern racing might have been arguably acceptable. But slimming the programme to an emaciated nine-day duration instead of the usual full fortnight proved to be a recipe for disaster, commercial and otherwise.

Qualifying practice sessions were spread over five and a half days. Most of them ran according to plan, until the final session was lost – and the first race postponed – thanks to fickle weather conditions on the Friday of what was supposed to be a tightly-packed long weekend of racing.

This was to ostensibly feature five races, each over four laps. But ACU clerk of the course Gary Thompson was obliged to cram three of them into Saturday, two with abbreviated lengths, leaving Sunday to lie fallow for god-botherers. The final pair were duly held on Monday, as officially scheduled. (I’ll discuss the stunted nature of some of these racing endeavours in due course.)

Anyway, at that point in time, the grievously truncated 2022 Manx Grand Prix was well and truly over. Excuses for its brevity were legion, ranging from government austerity in the pandemic’s wake to lack of sufficient volunteer course marshals and paramedics to maintain a fuller programme – an allegation that raised eyebrows at the TT Marshals Association, which also recruits for MGP cover.

Either way, the aftermath was a large number of confused and often embittered visiting spectators. Many of them, from all over Europe, had booked their passages at the end of the 2019 MGP, before the Covid pandemic kicked in. And these bookings had been rolled over repeatedly by the IoM Steam Packet ferry line, without refunds or the option of revised arrival and departure dates.

Manx wiseacres like to sneer at complaining in-comers by telling them: “if you don’t like it, there’s always a boat in the morning”. But, in this case, few were

available. A significant proportion of visitors were stuck on the Island until the following weekend, with nothing much to do but ride around aimlessly. Just two motorcylingrelated attractions took place during the rest of that week, a pocket-sized version of the erstwhile Classic TT’s vintage parade festival and a solitary evening beach cross.

For domestic consumption, both the TT and MGP are billed as powerful net contributors to the Manx economy. But on this occasion, local retailers and hospitality providers were blunt about the latter’s shortcomings.

Peel-based butcher Steve Tate was aghast at the consequences. “I always supply plenty of barbecue fodder to big groups of German and Dutch riders on the campsites around here,” he said. “A lot of them are older guys who prefer the MGP to the TT because it’s more relaxed. But after the racing cuts and getting shafted by the Steam Packet, they’ve been telling me they won’t be back again.”

Pub landlord Ben Sowrey, who has developed Sulby’s Ginger Hall Hotel into a leading on-course VIP hospitality package venue with ex-racer and bikesport TV commentator Steve Parrish as his front-ofhouse host, was particularly scathing.

“The shortened race period had been another nail in the coffin for me and my peers,” he told the local IoM Courier newspaper. “We were used to having ten solid busy days. But with this new-look timescale, we had about four days that were marginally busier than usual and only another four that were really busy over the main weekend. It pales in comparison to what we would normally expect. Our takings were halved.”

As for track action, abject failure to negotiate avoidance of direct conflict with a BSB championship round at Cadwell Park led to grids depleted of star riders with real-roads credentials. Obvious absentees were BSB names like Josh Brooks, Peter Hickman and Dean Harrison. And from the British Superstock 1000 paddock, Ian Hutchinson, Connor Cummins and Davey Todd were no-shows too.

The associated absence of some legendary Classic Superbike machines had a deleterious impact on proceedings as well. Batley dealership supremo Clive Padgett owns a plethora of historic exotica and had been a pillar of the Classic TT for many years. Most famously, he fielded a Yamaha YZR500 upon which Bruce Anstey established the fastestever IoM Mountain Course lap by a two-stroke machine in 2017. Connor Cummins took a podium on the same bike in 2019, after regular appearances and sound results on Padgett’s

At that point in time, the grievously truncated 2022 Manx Grand Prix was well and truly over

International Share Prices

USA – ERRATIC GUESSWORK

Analysts in New York kicked off the second week of September with wishful thinking about US Federal Reserve counter-inflationary policy, so indices initially rose in response. Then Tuesday’s negative CPI revelations upset the apple cart – rather than the anticipated 0.1% drop in inflation during August, the reality was a 0.1% increase. So, with the prospect of another baserate rise virtually certain, stock prices slumped. By Friday, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average had 4.8% and 4.1% losses respectively.

Although Harley-Davidson supremo Jochen Zeitz had targeted “late September” for the stand-alone listing and initial public share offer for Harley’s LiveWire business, a firm date has yet to emerge. So, after an upwards lunge of 4% on Monday,bad news about US inflation smacked Harley on Tuesday, just like everybody else, and its value plunged by 3.5%. Slippage continued on Wednesday before effectively flatlining on Thursday. Friday’s 1% loss ensured a negative weekly conclusion.

EUROPE – PUTIN’S SHADOW

US aggression on interest rates unsettled European investors and after a fortnight of positivity, Frankfurt’s key Xetra Dax stock index fell 2.7% and the Italian FTSE MIB in Milan flatlined. Underlying such fragile sentiment is Europe’s cost-of-living crisis, with big industrial countries scrambling desperately to import and store sufficient gas to run factories and heat homes through the winter – over which Russia’s war in Ukraine is going to loom ever larger.

On a brighter note, Volkswagen’s share-price bounce didn’t represent any real-world progress for the group. It was simply related to floating off some Porsche shares in an IPO.

JAPAN – STORM CLOUDS

The approach of an enormous typhoon had Japanese businesses literally running for cover. At the same time, Japan’s central bank warned that core inflation had hit an eight-year high and had now become a subject of concern. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 stock index promptly flipped back into negative territory, falling by 2.3% after a previous week of relief. All four indigenous motorcyclerelated brands were losers, Honda and Kawasaki taking the hardest knocks.