Despite today’s glorious Manx summer weather, Southern 100 organisers have confirmed tonight’s racing will go ahead.
Roads around the Colas Billown Circuit will be closing as planned at 6:05pm.
Tonight will see practice sessions for the 1100cc red plates and lightweight green plates before supersport 600c white and yellow plates and sidecar qualifying sessions.
The first race is due to be the Peel Holdings Senior Race over six laps, with the five lap Mike Kerruish Plumbing and Heating race closing out the night.
All being well, the roads will open by 9:40pm at the latest.
Last night’s session was cut short after an incident in the newcomers lap and capacity issues at Noble’s Hospital.
Manx Care
Responding to the decision to cancel Monday’s session, a Manx Care spokesperson said the following:
“Manx Care has a well-established system for assessing the readiness of hospital services to accept casualties from racing incidents that is operated during all motorsport events, including Southern 100. Prior to the commencement of yesterday’s practice session, the assessment was undertaken during a formal ‘Safe To Start Huddle’ which was attended by representatives of all departments who would be asked to respond in the case of a trauma case being admitted – these include the Emergency Department (ED), Orthopaedics, Operating Theatres, Air Ambulance, the Isle of Man Ambulance Service as well as the site management team.
“At the time of assessment, it was felt the hospital was ready for practicing at the Southern 100 to commence, despite ED being extremely busy and the Intensive Care Unit having one bed available – this was communicated to race organisers. Between the huddle taking place and the commencement of practicing, two extremely unwell patients were admitted to ED via Ambulance, both requiring a full Medical Emergency Team to treat them. Despite this increased activity across Noble’s, the team felt that we were still capable to respond to casualties coming from the Southern 100.
“Following the red flag incident and the receipt of two trauma cases were inbound from the first practice session, one of which was extremely unwell, this required the formation of two major trauma teams to care for them – the Trauma Team is formed of several specialties including Emergency Department doctors and nurses, Anaesthesia, Air Ambulance, Orthopaedics and Radiology.
“An overall assessment was undertaken of workload within ED and across the wider hospital and whether we would be able to safely care for one or more trauma cases should there be another incident on the S100 course. The discussion between the Executive Director on call (Oliver Radford) and ED Consultant In Charge was that we wouldn’t be able to safely care for another trauma case alongside the other patients in ED requiring urgent care. As a result we took the difficult decision to request from the race organisers that no further practicing take place yesterday evening due to the situation in the hospital.”
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