WHILE I WAS getting ready to write the final chapter of this book, I hadn’t raced on the roads for over a year, but it has been on my mind a lot lately and, unfortunately, for the wrong reasons.
Road racing formed a big part of the early bit of this book, but it’s well and truly over now. I look back (for what good that ever does) and think I should have done one year with TAS, in 2011, and called it a draw after that. The first year on the Suzuki was good, then I was just going through the motions.
You see some boys cross the finish line and they’re going bloody berserk, jumping up and down and doing burn-outs. I’ve won a load of races and the moment I crossed the line, the feeling was, ‘Huh, that’s all right. What’s on at work in the morning?’ I might have put my thumb up, or a hand in the air, but the feeling of winning never took over me like it obviously does for some lads. I don’t know if those riders are doing it out of excitement, or because they think that’s what you’re supposed to do, or they’re trying to entertain the crowd, but I’m not an entertainer. Ken Fox, the man who taught me to ride the Wall of Death, is an entertainer, a showman. That’s the last thing I am.
Even though I struggle to admit ever enjoying racing for teams, road racing still drew me back in. I couldn’t resist the chance of racing the HRC Fireblade and riding the Honda Six. Luckily, I lived to tell the tale, getting away with it by the skin of my teeth. I knew, while I was walking back up the road to the Honda that had just chucked me off at the 2017 TT, that was me done. Fuck you all, I’m not coming back. That’s not supposed to sound ungrateful, it’s just what it took to break the spell and how I felt in that moment.
There was a bit of an interview with Neil Tuxworth, the man who convinced me to race for Honda, in Performance Bikes in the middle of 2018. The magazine asked him about me and he said my mind must have been elsewhere and that’s why the Honda did nothing in 2017 when I was on it. Mates asked if I was annoyed, but I wasn’t at all. I like the man and he can say what he wants. He’s Mr Honda Racing and he’s playing the game. He has to pass the buck for the bike’s poor showing, and if he passes it to me, that’s all right. I don’t have a problem with Tuxworth, and he’s been round to ours for his tea since the magazine came out. I couldn’t care less what he said, because I know the business and how it has to be.
People who look at the results that Fireblade had in 2018 will see I didn’t have to say anything more. Those that know know, and now you’ve read this book, you know, too. If some people think I wasn’t quick enough that’s fair enough; just look what else it did the following season. And people were hardly bursting down the door to ride it.
The reason road racing was on my mind as I wrote this final chapter was because of a couple of fatal accidents involving people I knew well.
William Dunlop seemed to be on the verge of giving over, but he kept on going and on 7 July 2018 he crashed and died at Skerries, a big race on the coast not far from Dublin.
He hadn’t had the best season and he missed the TT, so he might have felt pressure going into the race at Skerries. I felt there was a lot of external pressure on him to keep racing because he was a Dunlop. I always thought he had a similar attitude to me; he wasn’t that bothered about the results, he just loved his riding. I was a teammate with him for a year, and he was a lazy bugger, but there was more to him than motorbikes.
The story I heard was a heavy landing knocked the sump plug out of the bottom of the engine and spat oil all over the back wheel. It’s such a shame because he’d not long had a kid and had another on the way. Perhaps he was a victim of his surname. He was a Dunlop and Dunlops keep racing.
Just one week later, a mate of mine, another Lincolnshire rider, Ivan Lintin, just about survived a big crash at Stadium Corner at the Southern 100 on the Isle of Man, the race I loved attending most of all. Ivor Biggun is my nickname for him and he used to come to races with me, before he started racing himself. He’s won TTs in the Supertwin class, and he was still a good goer.
From what I’ve heard, James Cowton crashed first and was killed. He was 25, from over the Humber from me in East Yorkshire. I didn’t know him very well, but he was a very confident lad, a good rider. It sounds like Ivan couldn’t avoid the wreckage and he crashed and was seriously injured, then another couple of lads crashed into the wreckage on the scene and broke a load of bones between them. As I’m writing this, in August 2018, I’m planning to visit Ivan in hospital. I’m told he’s opened his eyes, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, or what recovery he can expect.
When I saw Ivan or heard his name mentioned I never thought that he should pack in racing or that he was pushing his luck. I’d had those thoughts about McGuinness, Hutchy and Ryan Farquhar, but not Ivan. He’s in his early thirties, a bit younger than me. He’d had the odd crash, like all racers do, but he wasn’t a crasher.
Thinking about the accident made me grateful that in all my high-speed crashes, and there have been a few, I’d never caused anyone behind to crash. I’ve made some stupid mistakes and if someone had been killed on my wreckage it would be hard to live with myself. I would, of course, because I wouldn’t have a choice, but it’s a hell of a thing to have hanging over you. Luckily, I hadn’t had to deal with that. I’ve taken boys out, braking into slow corners, when I was new to road racing and a bit keen, but it was slow stuff and no one got hurt. I put a very dodgy move on Michael Rutter at the North West 200, at Mather’s Cross, before they put a chicane in, and I found him after the race to apologise for riding like a wanker. He just shook his head, and I learned from it.
When I was in the thick of racing and would hear about the death of a rider, I’d think, That’s another one dead, and forget about it. As heartless as that sounds, it’s what I did.
Back in 2004 I went to the funeral of Tommy Clucas, a road racer I’d met a few times, who died at the Manx Grand Prix. I went with Martin Finnegan and a whole lot of other road racers. I hadn’t been road racing long, but I sat there knowing I’d never go to another racer’s funeral, no matter how well I knew them, and I never have done. I didn’t need that kind of reminder of the risks. I didn’t even go to Martin Finnegan’s funeral, after his crash at Tandragee, and he was as close a friend as I had in racing.
Riders who I knew to pass the time of day with would die at the TT or in Ireland and I’d erase them from my mind. I wouldn’t even remember their names. The human brain is quite good at blocking things out, but now I’m on the outside of it, all I can think is how bloody dangerous it is.
In motorcycle road racing, your life is in the hands of other people – the riders around you; the marshals who might not have spotted oil on the track; the mechanics who spanner your bike; the mechanics who worked on the bike you’re chasing up the track – and the margin for error is so small on those tracks. I remember, in 2013 or 2014, at the TT, the front-wheel spindle nut came off my Suzuki Superstock 1000cc race bike. A spectator saw it and told one of the marshals who waved me to stop. I righted it in my head that the forks had bottomed out and that had caused the nut to come loose, because I trusted the bloke who’d worked on my bike and he told me he’d tightened it.
All that trust and ignoring of the risks are ways of coping with things just so you’ll turn up to the next race. Now I think I must have been mental. What was I doing? It’s crackers and I wouldn’t do it for all the tea in China.
When the mood takes me, I’m still planning to race the same Irish and Manx roads on my Rob North BSA, but it’ll be at a different level. I’ve always looked at racing as a hobby, and riding the classic will be exactly that. I’ll race it out of the back of my van and I can come first, last or do whatever I want and who gives a damn? I’m looking forward to racing without all the hype.
You already know I have had no problem finding other things to do away from the racing. My life never stops, but if it did I couldn’t stand it. I’m always the same: sometimes it gets too much and I think I just want to do nothing, but I can only stand half an hour of that and I’m itching to go again.
The pushbiking opened my eyes to other kicks, the passion of riding my pushbike for long distances. I have the next race in mind: the North Cape 4000, starting in Florence in Italy, and ending in North Cape, Norway, the most northerly point of mainland Europe. And then there’s Magadan, but I’m not sure when that’ll be.
As I warned in the preface, the stories that make up this book were written soon after they happened, when my memory was fresh, but also without the kind of perspective that hindsight gives you. If I sounded like I was being a wanker at times, it might be because I was, but hopefully I’ve given enough background to everything so you can see where I was coming from, even if you don’t agree with my point of view.
There’s still plenty on my plate. Trying to break the Nürburgring van lap record in the Transit; building the 300mph-in-a-mile Hayabusa; competing in the North Cape 4000, maybe as early as 2018; racing the BSA; building the Nissan GTR-powered Ford pickup for Pikes Peak 2020. And we’d like to go on a family holiday to Tel Aviv or Bethlehem.
We didn’t have Dot when I started this book and now she’s nine months old, doing grand and always smiling. She’s the greatest thing and I’d do anything for her.
Sharon’s definitely the best mum, but I’m not the best dad, because I’m work and shed, work and shed, but I do the best I can. They don’t want for much, except for a bit more of my time. Sharon still can’t understand why I put so many hours in at the truck yard. I don’t need to work as hard as I do for the money, but my life’s not like that. If you have to ask why I work all the time you don’t understand me. I could have all the money in the world and I’d still work my cock off. My head needs it.
When he was working, my dad was like Boxer from George Orwell’s Animal Farm : any problem, any confrontation, can be solved by burying yourself in work, and that’s rubbed off on me. I don’t think it’s a bad way to be. I don’t understand it myself sometimes, but I don’t argue against it.
I am getting into the habit of having Saturday afternoons off because I want to spend them with Shazza and Dot. We go out to walk a goat – Shazza likes goats – or we visit a country house or park.
I like being Dad. I like that they’re relying on me. It’s given me a bit of responsibility outside of my own shit. I’m usually such a selfish bastard, and everything’s about me building stuff, but I like this bit of compromise and the further down the line we get the more I enjoy it.
There are times I have Dot in the pram with me while I’m working in the shed, but it isn’t long before Sharon comes and fetches her. She says she doesn’t want Dot near any fumes, but it’s not bad in my shed. Just before writing this we were in the shed with The Cult on in the background while I was working on the Transit engine.
I’m looking forward to more of that. I’m looking forward to more of everything.