by Guy Martin
The week we chose to go away was Isle of Man TT race week and, because Shazza’s right into bikes, we watched some of the highlights on the telly in our hotel.
Michael Dunlop won the first Superbike and Peter Hickman won the Senior, setting a new lap record. I like Michael Dunlop. He’s obviously a very talented rider, but what I noticed, and liked the most, was that Dunlop finished fourth in the Senior. I look at Peter Hickman, who, in my opinion, is a better motorbike rider of the two, and is the best of the riders out there. He can do it in the British championship and on the roads. There are a lot of very good motorbike racers but they don’t have the balls for the road races. Hickman has and he’s managed to race at the TT in what I’d say is the right way – he’s built up to it in a sustainable way. That’s why I’d say he’s the better motorbike rider. That’s not saying Dunlop isn’t a brilliant road racer. Just look at his results; he’s one of the best ever and he has balls, but Hickman looks like he has more pure skill. To me, at least.
What impressed me about Dunlop in the Senior was he went out and didn’t look like he’d ride until he killed himself. He rode to fourth position and he’s lived to tell the tale. Tomorrow’s another day. It showed a maturity that some people thought he didn’t have in him. I’m sure he’ll think about what happened, come back and smoke them.
After I got back off holiday someone told me that Dean Harrison was leading and broke down, then was leading another race and lost by a few seconds. They asked if his TT week reminded me of any of mine, and it hadn’t occurred to me for one moment. It never even crossed my mind. One thing that did, during watching any of it, was the strong feeling that I was happy to be out of that world. I was so glad that I wasn’t riding motorbikes around the same piece of tarmac I’ve been riding for ten years or twelve years, or however long it was.
I’m still thankful I got out in one piece. The TT has a bit of draw, there’s no denying that, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back with Honda in 2017, after I was sure I was done with it. I walked away when plenty haven’t. Another two riders died at the TT in May 2018, including Dan Kneen. The thirty-year-old Manxman died after crashing in practice on a Superbike. He was racing for TAS on the BMW Superbike.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the TT, but I don’t give two fucks about it now. It’s a chapter of my life that’s over. What reason is there for me to go back again? What have I got to prove? People still ask me why I don’t go back, and when they do they’re just showing a complete lack of understanding of the motivations involved in competing at a place like that. Going back because it’s what I did and I was sort of all right at it is not a good reason to race the TT. It’s not even a reason, never mind a good one. But I look at some riders and it seems that that is exactly why they do keep going back. They’re not going back to win.
The years I raced there might define me to some people, but it’s not what defines me to myself and it hasn’t for years. Give me a day at Monkey World with Dot and Sharon instead.
If it hadn’t been for Shazza I wouldn’t have even turned the telly on. I was thinking, The Tour Divide starts tonight! When it did start I was straight on the trackleaders.com website to watch the progress of the leaders. Everyone competing in the race carries a SPOT Tracker, a little GPS device that sends a signal to a satellite so it can be traced. The website puts everyone’s progress on the map so you can click on it to see who is where. ‘Dot Spotters’, that’s what they call people like me who follow the race on the internet.
We were only away three nights. Sharon would have liked to have stayed away for longer, but I had to explain that she should be happy with what she’d got, not what she hadn’t. We’ve had four days away: be happy.
If it had been up to me I would have gone to work or spent the time in the shed, but we’ve got a nipper now and I’ll admit I only went away because I felt it was the right thing to do, but then I really enjoyed it. I switched my brain off from work and the shed. I can’t have a week off at home because I can’t stay out of the shed.
When I’ve been on holiday before I’ve always been itching to get back home, but I wasn’t this time, so it made me think we’ll have a few more days away later this year. We will go to France or Italy, when Dot’s a bit older. I spoke to Gary, one of the MOT testers where we take the trucks, and he told me he’d taken his daughter to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. That made me think there’ll be loads of places that I’d like to go, that I would never visit off my own back, but it will be great to take Dot.
CHAPTER 23
‘Nigel Racing Corporation’
THE NRC STORY starts with me driving out to the Monteblanco test, in Spain, where I rode the Honda Fireblade SP2 for the first time at the team’s opening test of the 2017 season. As usual, Honda arranged a team get-together before the first test. Neil Tuxworth and Jonny Twelvetrees were there, so were the boys from the endurance racing team and my road-racing teammate, John McGuinness …
The idea of having a meeting like this gets all the introductions out of the way, so you’re not doing so much of that on the first day of testing, when there’s plenty to do.
I had something on my mind that I wanted to get out in the open. When I’m in a daft mood me and Sharon would come up with stories about our dog Nigel having a secret life. I’d started saying he was the founder of Honda’s racing department and it always should’ve been called NRC, Nigel Racing Corporation, not what it actually is, HRC – Honda Racing Corporation. I’d told Andy Spellman about it, too, just spouting nonsense, and we even had HRC’s famous logo changed to read NRC.
I reckoned this team meeting was the perfect time to bring up the story and let Honda know I was thinking of making some stuff with NRC’s new logo on it. As we were sat around the table I started to explain, ‘You’ll never guess, that dog of mine only reckons he was the founder of Honda Racing Corporation and he’s going to make some hats with Nigel Racing Corporation on them.’
I was talking utter shite for my own amusement, pretending my Labrador was the founder of HRC. It wasn’t a conversation, it was a monologue. I was doing the talking and Honda Racing’s top brass didn’t say a word. This was the first time I’d met Jonny Twelvetrees, the 31-year-old team manager who’d been brought in to take over from Tuxworth, and I could see he was eyeing me a bit sideways, with a look on his face I read to say, ‘He’s bloody mental.’
When I said my piece Tuxworth was straight onto the next topic of conversation, talking about brake pads or something else irrelevant.
A couple of weeks later I was at Mablethorpe beach races, where Tuxworth nearly always goes because he’s on the committee. I had the first prototype of the Nigel Racing Corporation woolly hats and gave him it, saying: ‘Nigel’s only gone and done it. Bloody stupid hound.’
The next time I saw Jonny Twelvetrees I gave him one of the hats, saying the same thing, ‘Look what that dog of mine has gone and done.’ They didn’t know how to take it, but they didn’t say owt. Again, it was for my own amusement. It wasn’t taking my focus off the job in hand. I was riding that Fireblade at every test and race possible, even after seeing what it had done to McGuinness, and proving, at Elvington, that it didn’t have the top speed to be competitive. I was still riding it as hard as I could in the circumstances. You’ve already read that the Honda job didn’t go according to plan, but I was still putting my arse on the line for Honda at dangerous races, so I didn’t feel bad about this bit of daft fun.
At the TT I had an NRC sticker on the front of my helmet, rubbing their noses in the joke a bit. I got the feeling that Tuxworth found it funny, but he didn’t say anything or give me any clues. Remember, Jonny Twelvetrees had been brought in to manage the job by that stage, Tuxworth just overseeing things. Twelvetrees couldn’t have one of his riders – his only rider because the other one had been fucked over by Honda electrics – riding around with a sticker that was a pisstake parody of the company’s highly respected racing department. Then it became clea
r he didn’t want to tell me himself, so one of the youngest mechanics came up to me and said, ‘You’ve got to take that sticker off your helmet.’ We were having a hard time as a team by that stage, we didn’t need any more friction, so I put another sticker on to cover it up.
And that leads to the next part of the NRC story … Take the broken backs and the singed eyebrows out of it, and racing has been bloody good to me over the years. I began racing motorbikes before I had my own car or van to get to the circuits, and I’d convince my mum to drive me to the races, where she’d read a magazine while I was preparing for the next session. I started out paying my own way, with help from my dad, spending all my wages from my full-time truck job and working a night job in Chicago Rock Café, collecting glasses, to earn extra to pay for the job. It was like that right up until after I’d competed in my first ever Irish road race, at Kells. I’d been spotted by Sam Finlay, who ran a privateer team, and he asked if I wanted to race for his Team Racing outfit. That was a big change in my life, and I moved out to Ireland, living in a half-finished bungalow, the Fungalow. That was the first step towards racing for different teams up until the end of 2017, when I decided to pack in that side of racing for good.
I felt I wanted to give a bit back, so I’ve been helping a couple of local lads, twin brothers Tim and Tom Neave. I’ve known them for years, and I’m good friends with their uncle, also called Tim. I’ve built and tuned their engines, and bought them tyres, right back to when they raced in flat-track. A few years ago, they both decided to pack in dirt tracking and start road racing. Now they’re in the national championship, both competing in different British Superbike support classes.
Tom seemed to take to road racing better initially, but he had a shoulder injury, and needed an operation, so he didn’t race in the first half of 2018.
I didn’t really want it to be known that I was sponsoring them, so I’ve had them both agree that they won’t mention my name. Instead, Tim says he’s racing for the Nigel Racing Corporation and Tom is racing for a splinter group, called Stevowaki – another racing organisation with Steve, another of my dogs, in charge.
Nigel is four years old, and a big part of my life. We ended up getting Steve by chance, through a mate called Steve Broadbent in the Isle of Man. He used to work for the Steam Packet ferry, but now he sells anchors for offshore windfarms and oil rigs.
He deals with a lass who breeds Labradors. I asked him to let us know if they were having another litter. A while later he rang us saying, ‘She’s got one left, do you want it?’ I thought it would suit Nige to have a mate, but my sister reckoned we didn’t need another dog, and that Nigel was great by himself. When I spoke to people with dog experience they said two dogs is easier than one dog. It’s all right me wanting one, so I asked Shazza, and she was happy to have another dog, so we ended up with Steve and he’s been bloody brilliant. He’s a better pup than Nige was, and he’s a better dog now. Nige is very Nigel – it’s his way or no way – where Steve is a proper pet. You give him a bollocking and he won’t do it again. Nige is obviously the best, but he’s a pain in the arse.
I like human names for dogs and Sharon is a big fan of Stephen Fry, so he’s Steve. I think Graham is going to be the next one. And a goat called Ferris. And some chickens. I reckon if the goat grows up with dogs it’ll think it is a dog. It won’t be named after Ferris Bueller, but the one with the big dick in the film Sex Lives of the Potato Men. Ferris! You had to be there.
Steve is a bit of a rebel without a cause, Nigel is more calculating. Nigel is a better team owner, but Steve is a better dog. Nigel is always trying to kill Steve. He did it again last week. I let them out in the yard and they’re no bother. Nigel will jump over the fence and clear off for half an hour, then come back, jump over the fence again and that’s it: you never have to worry about him.
Steve can’t work out how to jump over the fence. He has watched Nige do it every day and he’s never tried it himself, but if the gate is ever left open, and Steve can follow Nige out, then they bugger off together. Nigel goes far enough away that Steve has no chance of finding his way back, then Nigel gives him the slip and comes back on his own. I once had to drive five miles to find Steve.
I get the feeling that Nigel’s always planning: If I do this, that will happen, if I do that, this will happen. Steve is just ‘Hiya! Huh, huh, huh …’
Nige took Steve right to the main road. I can imagine him saying, ‘Steven, what do you think would happen if we walked into the road?’
Nigel is my first boy and I’d do anything for the pair of them, but there are times when I’m at the end of my tether with Nige. He came back without Steve again and he knew what he’d done. I could see it in his face. I threatened him with a long-term move to my sister’s, but that’s not really a punishment. She thinks as much of him as I do.
When they both escape Sharon goes mental with me (because it’s normally me that’s left the gate open). It annoys me that the dogs have buggered off, but what annoys me more is they’ve landed me in trouble with Sharon. When I find them I remind them, in the bluntest terms possible, they’re a pair of bastards, and that I’m getting my ear chewed off because of them.
Anyway, both dogs have these race teams. Nigel’s name is on Tim’s Yamaha R6. If you’re racing in the Supersport class, you’ve got to have a Yamaha R6. It’s the only new bike out there really. The other manufacturers have stopped developing Supersport 600 bikes because sales of those kinds of road bikes completely died.
Tom competes in the Superstock 1000 class, where you have more choice. BMW, Kawasaki and Suzuki all make good Superstock bikes. I wouldn’t choose a Honda or a Yamaha this year, so I bought a Suzuki GSX-R1000 for Tom. The lads buy the rest of the stuff they need: exhaust, spare wheels, race bodywork, clip-ons …
They used to race in the same class and it always had the potential to get messy, because they were so focused on each other. It’s better that they’re at the same race meeting, but not in the same class. One isn’t looking what the other is doing and just trying to beat him rather than seeing the bigger picture and the other 20-odd other bikes out there with them.
Having the dyno in the shed at home has meant I could do a bit more than usual, especially with Tim’s 600. The bike came with a World Supersport specification electronic control system. Neither of us thought it was that good and Tim said the bike was hard to ride with it on. Then the engine blew and I thought it was the fault of the ignition, detonating a piston through timing. I couldn’t find exactly what it was, but we had been struggling with cylinder trimming, perfecting the timing and fuelling for each of the engine’s four cylinders. We knew it was running lean on one cylinder, the one that shit itself. We had all the fuel injectors checked and knew there was nothing adrift mechanically. It was all perfect, so the only thing it could be was the ignition lighting the fuel earlier, or we weren’t putting enough fuel in that one cylinder.
Tim bit the bullet and bought a ‘kit’ ignition system for £1,600 to solve the problem. ‘Kit’ means it’s Yamaha’s official racing ignition. It’s not the most sophisticated, but it should be good enough. If you compare the kit to a MoTeC system, like I’ve used on Superbikes and Supersport bikes, the MoTeC is £3,000 just for the loom, £3,000 for the ECU and £1,500 for the dash, and it won’t work without all three of them. With the kit system you can use the standard Yamaha dash and loom with the £1,600 ECU. The downside is the kit ECU doesn’t have the same potential to help make as much horsepower as the MoTeC. And in the Supersport 600 class, where the bikes aren’t making a massive amount of power, every increase you can squeeze out of the engine makes a big difference.
I was still learning the dyno when we plugged in the new ignition. Tim was under pressure; I had to go to work and I felt the fuelling was miles out. I made it safe on the dyno, but not that quick. Then he did a track day at Knockhill, where his next race was, and said it was loads better.
I don’t go and watch either of them racing. I let th
em get on with it and wait to hear how they did. I’m not that interested in their results, that’s not why I’m helping them.
Even before the season started I could imagine Tom getting on a podium, on the 1000, or even winning a British championship race in the near future, and not long after coming back from injury he did put it on the podium.
If I were being blunt, I’d say that, as good as they are, I’m not sure either of them is good enough to get to the point where someone is paying them to ride. There are hundreds of young riders out there all hoping to get picked up by a team, but only a handful get signed. I hope they prove me wrong, and, obviously, I’d be dead happy if that happened, but I’m not putting my money into the job because I think they’re going to be the next Mick Doohan. I’m doing it because I like them. Like I said, racing has been good to me and this is my way of giving a bit back.
CHAPTER 24
‘An entertainer, a showman. That’s the last thing I am’
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.