Wolves' Howe goes back to basics
Struggling speedway rider David Howe will go back to basics in a bid to salvage his season at Wolverhampton.
Struggling speedway rider David Howe will go back to basics in a bid to salvage his season at Wolverhampton.
The 26-year-old blazed a trail at Monmore at the start of the campaign, recording a string of double-figure scores and beating such big names as Jason Crump, Chris Harris and Bjarne Pedersen.
But a niggling spell of ignition problems took the edge off his confidence, which in turn triggered a vicious spiral of lower scoring.
It culminated in Monday's defeat for the Parrys International Wolves at the hands of a short-handed Lakeside outfit, when Howe scored paid three and was pulled out of his last ride.
With a crunch Monmore clash against fellow Elite League strugglers Coventry looming on Monday, Howe has made major changes.
He said: "Obviously Monday was the worst possible performance by me. There's nothing wrong with my bikes. The initial problem was ignition, but we've solved that. I haven't been setting my bikes up particularly well.
"When I'm riding well, I'll ride anything – any bike, any engine, any set-up – and do well on it. When I drop off a little, I need the bike to be perfect or I'm pretty ordinary, like Monday."
In a bid to snap the cycle, Howe and his mechanics have made drastic alterations and gone back to the configuration used at the beginning of last season.
He said: "We made some pretty radical changes after the meeting on Monday. I went out for a skid and it was the best I've felt around Wolverhampton for a long while.
"I'd lost that little bit of confidence and edge I was on. I'm finding it difficult to get it back. Yet I've started riding in Poland in the last month and I'm doing well. I'm doing well in Sweden. The one place in the world you would expect me to do well at is Wolverhampton and I'm not.
"I feel it more at Wolverhampton, because I know what's expected of me there. I'm finding myself feeling quite nervous.
"At the start of the year it was: 'This is Wolverhampton, this is my track. No-one will beat me around here without a fight.'
"Now I'm working myself up over it."
Howe is notably – some might say notoriously – self-analytical about all aspects of his riding.
"In the past sometimes, I've thought too much and gone the wrong way. Now we're trying to simplify it. We're drawing a line under it.
"The one person in the world who doesn't want to be in this position is me. I can't afford to score three points every week. I need to live.
"I don't expect suddenly to go back to scoring 13 or 14 points, like I was doing at the start of the season. But I want to be competitive.
"Anybody can say anything and words mean nothing. The bull stops when the flag drops, as they say.
"I did feel very good after the meeting on Monday and hopefully I can carry on."
