FAFs Rejoice and Punch Revealed!

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Those who have been following the everyday saga of track folk, as presented in the Blunsdon Blog, will no doubt know, the air fence has been monopolising our work over the past five weeks.

Today I can proudly announce that the blo...dy thing is clean and tidy and safely stored ready for collection by the manufacturers. Gerald, Punch, Mick (from Swindon Pressure Cleaning) and I managed to hook up the final 15 sections in the car park, hose them down, deflate and dry them and then fold and store. So all you FAFs out there – Friends of the Air Fence – will have to make do with just the occasional mention between now and March when we’ll go through the whole rigmorole in reverse when we put the blo..dy thing back again in readiness for press and practice day.

Mind you, I could have parked my car better. By the time that Mick had finished with the fence the once pristine white 205 looked as if it had just completed the old RAC Rally. It really was “Showered in Shale”, to borrow the title from Jeff Scott’s brilliant account of a year in speedway.

While we pack the panels away Gerald ventures out onto the track with the small blade. He’s considered using the big motorway blade again but the shale on the turns is still very wet from where we cut it last week and we’re worried that the whole machine will simply get bogged down. At this stage we need to add some new shale to the old to get it to bind properly. Many of the properties that shale possess help it to stick together and form a firm, hard base but those elements are also the first to be washed away when it rains. Consequently, the shale on the track is weak and needs bolstering up. Sadly our JCB is under repair at the moment so the new shale will have to wait. It’s a real shame because had we been able to mix it in we could them have bladed and then tyre packed (to protect the surface) in readiness for future work.

Punch and I shovel loose material away from the kick boards and the trim up the track down the main straight, cutting away the shale from alongside the white line. Gerald spreads the debris we shower on the track and the whole place looks as if it could stage a meeting by the time that we pack our things up as the light starts to fade.

The lack of new work on the track this week gives me a chance to talk to the longest serving member of the track team at Blunsdon, the one and only Punch.

Rod Ford, known throughout the speedway world as “Punch” is a real character. He got the nickname from being a pretty successful amateur boxer in his younger days, actually appearing on television for one bout. Married, with a large family based in the area, he dotes on his children and grandchildren. If you want to bring a smile to his face, ask him to talk about his grandchildren.

Punch’s father was a farm worker and the family moved about a fair deal during his formative years. He recounts stories of long, long days spent working in the fields as a youngster – character and strength building times that have served him so well in the intervening years.

When I proposed an interview his first comment was, “Write what you f….g well like!” so what follows is taken from odd snippets of conversation with him over the past few weeks.

He saw his first meeting at Swindon in 1949, the very first meeting at the Abbey. He couldn’t remember the opposition or the score. Here I turn to Robert Bam ford’s excellent tome “Homes of British Speedway” (ISBN 0-7524-4004-7 which would make a brilliant Christmas present for any speedway fan!) That first meet was on 23rd July 1949 and the opposition was Oxford. The score … well, the Robins actually lost 39-45, but we’ll gloss over that. He can remember that his Dad and he stood on a block of concrete on the exit of turn two. From that moment on Punch was hooked on the noble sport.

To date Punch has worked at the track for 36 years. He was introduced to the track team by his good friend, the late Ray Morse, who for many years was Clerk of the Course at Swindon right up until his death. Another track man, John Smith, worked alongside Punch under the overall guidance of Ted Nelson, who was in charge of the track at the time.

His first tasks were shovelling the shale and tractor driving. Of course, in those days, speedway at Swindon was a Saturday night affair and this enabled Punch to combine his full time job as a builder with his passion for the shale sport. Watering of the track was via four hose pipes, one on each bend, and Punch spent the first few years hosing down turns three and four.

This was many years before the advent of the air fence. In those days the track was surrounded by a four foot high safety fence and any advertising banners were simply hung over the barrier. Crowds were huge in those halcyon days. Punch recalls having to park his car down near to the Turnpike Roundabout before one international match at the Abbey.

So what have been the major changes in his time at Blunsdon? Tracks were deeper in those days. The old two stroke Jawas and Japs coped with the deep stuff and times were not that far off what is seen nowadays. “It’s just that these four strokes are so powerful and the back wheels spin so much, I suppose the riders would find it difficult to turn the bikes enough.” He doesn’t have much time for today’s penchant for slick tracks. “It just seems as if everything is about speed, just brute speed. I don’t think you can say that the riders of old were more skilful than today but perhaps the better riders shone more and those with less talent had to work that much harder for success.”

Of course, the machinery used to prepare a track now is much more sophisticated than it was in the distant days pre the 4 stroke revolution. “Yes, but one major advantage those old bikes has was that they spread oil over the surface of the track and oil helps bind a shale surface better than anything else. By the end of a meeting virtually the entire track had been dusted with a thin film of engine oil and we just had to grade it and let the oil do the rest. Nowadays all we get is water from the dog track and that destroys the binding qualities of the surface and results in bumps and holes.”

The banking at The Abbey was steeper than it is now. “John Hector tried to blade it down so that it was like Poole’s track,” he comments. “But it’s built up a bit since then. We had to raise the safety fence to its present height (about 6 foot) for safety reasons – the lighting masts weren’t far enough away from the track fence so the Control Board made us raise them. It wasn’t popular with the fans but we had to do it for safety reasons.”

Rider safety is paramount when it comes to track preparation and Punch is under no illusions that the introduction of the air fence has been a good thing for speedway riders and fans alike. “It’s given riders more confidence to try different lines and in so doing has improved the quality of the racing.”

Blunsdon is one of the last big tracks in Britain and it is well known for the speeds that the riders achieve, yet the number of serious accidents at The Abbey is considerably less than at most tracks. Punch thinks he knows why. “It’s a big and open track. If a rider gets into trouble there’s usually plenty of space for him to try to correct himself. The banking also helps because it pushes the rider into the inside of the track and away from the fence. Our air fence has worked well this year. One referee (I’d better not mention any names) tried to claim that a rider had slipped under the fence during one incident but fortunately we had a photographer on hand who was able to show that the fence stopped him before he could slide under. The last nasty accident we had here was when Billy Hamill was injured here over a year ago. And that was because his engine seized mid corner and the rider behind him couldn’t get his bike down in time.”

When you’ve been as integral to the sport as Punch has been for such a long time it’s inevitable that you have favourite riders, and not so favourite riders!

“My favourite rider for sheer speed was Erik Gundersen, although Jan O Pedersen wasn’t far behind him. The most stylish was the late, and great Tommy Jansson. He was a beautiful rider to watch and the sport took a real blow when he was killed in a World Championship meeting in Sweden. Of our own boys I’d say Martin Ashby was one I always enjoyed watching. Of the visiting riders I liked Ilya Teromaa and John Boulger and I thought that the late Kenny Carter was perhaps the most exciting British rider of his time. It’s difficult comparing riders from different decades – the sport has moved on and developed and styles come and go. One rider who could hold the white line better than anyone else I ever saw at Blunsdon was Steen Mastrup in the early eighties. He was a much better rider than many think – good balance and control of the throttle. A safe and stylish rider.

Anders Michanek and Ove Fundin were hard riders but I always got on well with them. The best team manager I ever worked with was Dick Bradley, who used to own a garage in Cricklade. He was a great bloke to work for, but then I’ve worked for so many over the years. I’ve seen them all come and go,” he chuckles.

Of the modern day riders, who really impresses Punch. “I’d have to say that the most skilful rider I’ve seen here, in fact anywhere, is Leigh Adams. He has such skill and never looks in trouble. The most aggressive is Jason Crump. He is aggressive on the track and also off it. He really drives himself and deserves to be World Champion. If Leigh Adams had a little bit of Jason’s competitiveness he’d be World Champion. But Leigh’s a top bloke –really nice. This year especially, he’s made the effort to have a chat with track staff as often as possible and we really appreciate it. If Cumpy is Mr Aggressive then Mr Nice Guy is Mark Loram. “He is one of the fairest racers I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t give up until the race has finished and he never closes the door on a rider. I’ve seen a few who would as soon put you in the fence as let you past. That’s not Mark’s way and I respect him for that.”

But what about other tracks? Which ones, from the vast number that he’s visited, does he remember most fondly. “The old Edinburgh track was a pretty one and I do like the one at Somerset now. Tracks like the old circuit at Knowle in Bristol used to produce good racing.”

So what makes a good track? Punch’s views may not be in vogue with many promoters but his experience is vast and should not be ignored. “The secret, if there is one, is in the preparation. You can’t take short cuts with preparing a good track. The weather gets in the way and you have to find a way around that but it comes down to good old hard work. I like tracks to have lots of grip – I just can’t get on with these tracks that have been tyre packed to death. Watering is also vital. Too little and you’ve got a dust bowl, too much and the racing becomes processional. It’s a fine line but a good track man has to know his track and its surface so well. You can’t just pitch up on race day and run the grader around and hope for the best. You’ve got to work on it throughout the year. Build up the surface layer by layer and then read it like a book from week to week.”

As we look to the coming season and British riders once again find themselves only seeded through to the Grand Prix series, what does Punch believe is missing from our set up in the UK? “Simple. We need more training tracks and more ex riders and riders to run them. The Scandinavian and Polish riders have so much more opportunity to learn their skills when they are young. Our youngsters are pitched in with a “sink or swim” attitude. They don’t get a chance to work on their riding in a non pressurised manner.”