Club invest in ambulance

SCUNTHORPE SPEEDWAY has invested in an ambulance – to help meetings at the Eddie Wright Raceway run as smoothly as possible. It will help not only with the fixtures of the Henderson Insurance Scunthorpe Scorpions, but also with the Stock Car meetings at the venue.

Scunthorpe promoter Rob Godfrey explains: “I’ve bought a fully equipped ambulance straight of the National Health. Now, for meetings at Scunthorpe, we have the St John, who would take the rider to hospital if necessary, but then our own paramedics would move into place with my ambulance so that the meeting can continue.

“We all accept there are going to be delays when riders get injured, and rider safety remains paramount, but the last thing you want is to be holding the meeting up too much. People don’t want to be hanging around, so if we can minimise that, so much the better.

“The NHS is becoming increasingly stretched, so they are going to be more and more problems with delays of waiting around for an ambulance to arrive, so we have decided to be pro-active and do something about it.

“We pride ourselves on our prompt staging of meetings at the Eddie Wright Raceway. I’ve always listened to the views of the supporters, and they made it clear that one of the main bugbears is meetings being dragged out. So we start bang on time, and minimise any lengthy breaks during meetings, and having our own ambulance will help further with this.

“Long-term, I think this is something the sport as a whole is going to have to face up to. I know Berwick have also already bought their own ambulance, and it could other clubs also consider doing something similar. I actually bought ours last October and we can use it for stock cars as well. It’s fully kitted out and raring to go as the back-up and this is more investment in our club.”