by Guy Martin
Because we’d had next to no track time I pushed to race at two British Superbike meetings. We went to Thruxton first, which is a fast track as British short circuits go, but nothing like the TT or Ulster obviously.
I think I qualified on the front row on the Superstock 1000 and inside the top ten on the Supersport bike. And I’m not a short circuit man, but I thought, bloody hell, when I put my mind to it I can do it.
I was running in the top six in the race, then I crashed. I lost the front end going into the chicane and didn’t know why. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong or pushing too hard. I haven’t had many of those. I was obviously too hard on the brakes for those conditions on those tyres. The crash didn’t do much damage to the bike; it just scraped the side.
It was still a constructive weekend. I had some time on the bike, but not loads. The big problem with using a British Superbike race as a test is the fact that you are there for three nights and three days for very little track time. On Friday you get two 20-minute sessions, on Saturday you get one 20-minute session, and on Sunday you get a morning warm-up and one or two 20-minute races, depending which class you’re running in. So, you get less than an hour and a half of track time for three days at a circuit. I could enter a few classes at a one-day club race and get more time on the bike. At that stage of the season a club race would be as useful, because I’m using the race as a test, getting stuff dialled in, not seriously looking at lap times. It’s more about the feel than the times.
Then I went to Oulton Park on the first of May to race during a British Superbike weekend. The North West 200 was ten days away, the start of the TT two weeks after that. Wilson got me an entry for the Supersport and Superbike class in the same weekend. It was going to be a busy weekend, but I needed it. I needed time on the bike.
When the most important bike of my year, the Honda Fireblade in Superbike specification, which I would cane around the island to try and win an elusive TT, was wheeled out in front of me at Oulton Park, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. When I walked around the right-hand side I immediately saw that its exhaust silencer was sticking right out at a stupid angle. The exhaust silencer bracket had been put on the wrong way round. I could have given it to my grannie, Double-Decker Lil, and she would have worked out the bracket was the wrong way round. I had to take a photo of it, because it was such a bloody daft thing for anyone to have done.
Danny remembers the race meeting as an absolute waste of time. He was working on the bikes and coming across all sorts of problems. The clutch levers that had been fitted resulted in two burned-out clutches – two wrecked races. Another engine blew up as well. It was a case of put them in the van and let’s get out of here. We had to strip the bikes and start again. We left Oulton Park early to get the bikes ready for the North West 200.
I told Wilson that I didn’t want anyone else working on my bikes. He could organise getting all the parts, but I would sort out preparing the three of them – Superbike, Superstock and Supersport – with my dad and Johnny helping. I explained everything that I thought was wrong with the bikes to Wilson, but there were others telling him that there was nothing wrong with them and that everything was my fault. I was not happy.
Unfortunately, and confusingly, Wilson was believing them, not me. Why would I be criticising a world championship team before I’d even ridden the bike in a race I was employed to compete in if there wasn’t something badly wrong? It didn’t make sense. Danny, Cammy and Johnny were saying to me, ‘We can’t have them saying all this, because everyone thinks we’re useless.’ I felt the reputation of my lads was suffering because of the actions of others.
Oulton hadn’t shed much light on anything, because the bikes were so far off. Much too soon, it was the middle of May and time for the North West 200 – a vital race to help set bikes up for the TT, because you could really get them wound up to top speed. There are other Irish races before the North West, like Cookstown, but you don’t get the same clues to set-up and performance. The 2010 North West would be a disaster. I crashed the Superstock bike in practice. I tipped in to the last corner too early, clipped the kerb and lost the front end. It was 100 per cent my fault. I reckon my eye wasn’t on the ball. I had so many things to think about and was distracted. I do like to build my own bikes, but I’d taken on too much this time, out of necessity. I couldn’t race these bikes if I didn’t think they were right. All the racers have two arms and two legs, that means so much of racing successfully is in the mind. And mine wouldn’t be on the job if I didn’t have my own lads rebuild these Hondas. This was the first time it struck home that I was making too many decisions and trying to race at the same time. The way the bikes were being delivered to us meant that I had the added pressure of either stripping them to a bare frame and starting again, or at least organising someone that I trusted to do it. Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded this situation if I’d known what I was getting into, but it had been landed on me too close to the TT and I was on the back foot. Also, me, Johnny and my dad were doing it for free while someone was being paid to build what we were spending days and days trying to fix.
I’m someone who likes to have a lot on his plate. I’m happy to have distractions, but this was one too far, and I felt the buck stopped with me, because I’d set up this structure without a crew chief. I was thinking about gearing and gearboxes, concentrating on what I was going to change when I got in the pits, rather than thinking about what I was doing on the track, when I clipped the Coleraine kerb.
The day went from bad to worse. The clutch went in the Superbike, the 600 blew up and I can’t remember the rest of the results. It was a race meeting that was memorable just for being bad. There wasn’t a single positive to come out of it except that I hadn’t injured myself badly crashing. I got back from Ireland on Sunday knowing there was just one week before we’d leave for the Isle of Man TT.
During all this, the pre-production of the film TT3D: Closer to the Edge was going on.
My involvement in the film began around the end of 2009. The boss of North One Television, the company who had taken over the contract for producing the Isle of Man TT highlights programme for ITV, had been approached by an outfit called CinemaNX. This Manx-based film production company was funded, in part, by Manx government money as an investment for the island. CinemaNX were talking about making a film of the TT and approached North One because they had all the footage and rights to the race action shot during the fortnight, action that was crucial to the film.
I was down in London talking to North One Television about their plans to make me a TV presenter. I didn’t honestly think anything would come of it, but if it did it might be fun and I’d earn a few quid, which would oil the wheels money-wise. As far as money goes, my opinion is that you’re better off looking at it, than for it.
The London meeting had been scheduled so that I could also go to the get-together about the film. Andy Spellman came into the meeting with me as an adviser, but we were totally out of our depth. I didn’t have a clue, and all of a sudden we are in a room with people who’ve made films with Christopher Walken and Zac Efron.
When I first met him, I thought Andy worked for North One, because he’d been one of the TV directors that filmed a lot of riders for the 2009 ITV coverage. It turned out he was a freelance producer fresh from the world of Formula One cars – who also had his fingers in other TV projects and businesses of his own. Road racing couldn’t be much further removed from the F1 world, but he must have liked what I said, or how I said it, because he got all revved up to try and get me involved in a TV programme. After the TT in 2009 we met at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and he explained he was keen to act as an agent for me on the TV side of things, before I even had a TV side of things. He said it would be a learning curve for both of us, but he knew the TV and commercial world better than me and he promised he would make sure I didn’t get shafted or involved in anything that would make me look like a dickhead. He added that if I was being a dickhead
he’d tell me. I said, ‘You’ll do for me, boy,’ still thinking nothing would come of it.
Back in the meeting, we sat listening to Steve Christian, who was the executive producer of the proposed TT film, and the director, Richard De Aragues, who were doing all the talking. De Aragues had filmed adverts and small projects and I picked up on the fact that this was going to be his first film.
The original plan, as outlined at this meeting, was for Closer to the Edge to be a two-part documentary. The first part was going to be a dramatisation of the 1967 race between two of the all-time greats, Giacomo Agostini and Mike Hailwood. It’s a race that has gone down in history. The film production company wanted me to be a stunt man for it, dressed up as one or both of them. The second part of the film was going to be a documentary of the 2010 TT. In that first meeting they were talking of budgets of 30–40 million quid. Even though most of the talk was going over my head, I was picking up enough to know it was massively ambitious. I was in nod-smile-agree mode. I came out of the meeting thinking, ‘As long as I’ve got a hole in my arse, that’s not happening.’
With this film job and the interest from the TV production company people who thought I could become a TV presenter, I started thinking I was in some kind of Truman Show; like I was the Jim Carrey character, being secretly filmed for others’ amusement, with everyone laughing at me doing these things. The difference between me and the Jim Carrey character, of course, was that everything that happened to me was happening for real, in the real world – sometimes it just didn’t seem like it.
Over the coming months the Closer to the Edge plan was scaled down, but still moving along. In early 2010, I got a call from Andy Spellman saying he thought it was going to happen, but the budget had shrunk a lot. Someone said it ended up costing a couple of million quid, not the mega money they’d been talking about at the start.
As the planning of the film started, the production company said they wanted the bike I was going to race, Wilson Craig’s Honda Fireblade, to have a simple, classic paint scheme. The Agostini and Hailwood part of the project had been dropped, but someone clearly wanted to shoehorn in a visual link to those days.
The problem was, Wilson had a lot of sponsors lined up for the season and the producers didn’t want their logos on the bike. I was also asked if I needed to wear any logos on my leathers, and I must’ve been getting a truck ready for an MoT or something when the call came in, because I just said ‘No’ and signed a contract to say I could ride in plain leathers. I’d forgotten Dainese, Pirelli, Red Torpedo, AGV, Elas … That caused a bit of a headache for Andy Spellman, who was trying to sort it all out.
I don’t know if it was because of the director’s background in adverts, but it was De Aragues who was obsessed with the whole look of the bike and the leathers. There were a thousand emails going back and forth, between the film company and Andy, about these leathers. Dainese weren’t happy about the lack of logos, while De Aragues wasn’t happy with any logo at all. The film director wanted the number 8, that was to be stitched on the back of the leathers, tweaking this way and that. I kept being reminded, by Andy, that I was in breach of two contracts I’d signed – one with Dainese and the other with the film people. I’d shrug.
At times like that I just think, ‘Fuck it, it’ll be right.’ And it normally is. Someone will bail me out, and it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission. If anyone had taken the hump and said they didn’t want to deal with me any more, then it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. The people at Dainese are so nice, the kit is mega, and I don’t want any of them to get into trouble at work over me, but when it comes down to losing a sponsor or something, I’m just not bothered.
Part of me thinks these sponsors have got involved with me and they know what I’m like. In the last couple of years lots of stuff would’ve fallen apart if it wasn’t for Andy, but I would still have had the trucks to go back to and I’d still be racing bikes. When those are the most important things in your life, and they are to me, then it’s difficult for people to hold me over a barrel. I don’t worry about any of the other stuff – TV, sponsors, or whatever – crashing down. In fact, there are times I almost wish it all would.
On the eve of the 2010 TT, because of the state of the bikes and the work needed to ready them, the film wasn’t on my mind. I knew I had to do a few bits and pieces, but I was concentrating on what was right in front of me – three motorbikes that needed sorting.
We got on with preparing the bikes for the toughest test in road racing. The TT can find any weakness in a bike and hammer it till it fails. I was so busy prepping the bikes, right up until the last minute, that I hadn’t even thought about racing them, or how I was going to challenge for a win, until I was on the ferry.
CHAPTER 13
THE FATEFUL SENIOR
‘A death can happen in a race meeting and it barely sends one ripple through my part of the paddock.’
WHEN WE ARRIVED on the Isle of Man we had to drive straight to one of my long-term personal sponsors, Gary Hewitt of ELAS, to borrow parts out of a bike he had on display in his house. Gary had bought my 2009 Fireblade race bike, from Shaun Muir, to put on display in his house, and I wanted to borrow the swingarm out of it for the Wilson Craig bike. It was the same swingarm I’d bought from Spondon. We went to Gary’s directly from the ferry, and then it was finally time to ride …
After the first night of practice, I told the lads we had a lot to do. I knew then it was going to be a long and tough fortnight. The lack of high-speed stability made the Superbike very hard work through places like the 170 mph right-hander at the end of the Cronk-Y-Voddy straight. The bike was dead nervous and lacked accuracy. I had to fight it, and that, in turn, was making me suffer from arm pump.
When you’re hanging on for grim death on a bike that isn’t handling right, the muscles in your forearms are doing a lot of work and they demand a lot of blood. Because you’re tense, the blood can flow in, but it struggles to flow out. This means your muscles go absolutely rock-solid and your hands go numb. You end up with no feeling in your hands and fingers, so you can’t judge how hard you’re pulling the brake lever, or how hard you’re gripping your handlebars. Arm pump also alters your position on the bike, as you can’t fully commit to hang off the side of the bike through corners because you can’t feel the ’bars. It’s not a nice feeling, but I hadn’t suffered with it for years.
Riding the bike with a full tank of 24 litres of fuel on board totally changed the bike’s character too.
My idea that year had been that I’d make all the decisions so I didn’t have to explain everything to a middle-man. It sounded like a great idea, but the decisions were coming thick and fast as we’d been dropped in it, having to prepare the bikes ourselves, because of how we felt about PTR’s preparation. The lads, Cammy, Danny and Johnny, were asking me everything about setup – stuff they’d normally ask me about, but I had my head full of all the prep I had to do as well. They knew exactly what they were doing, but mechanics need guidance for set-up. That comes from the rider, but it was taking too much time and thought to explain everything when we had so much else to do. Do we put another clutch in it? What’s the gearing? Do we change the rear ride height? I was racing three bikes – Superbike, Superstock, Supersport, as usual.
At many race meetings I’ll race a Superbike, with over 210 bhp running on slick tyres. I’ll also race a Superstock 1000 on treaded tyres and the Supersport 600, a really trick bit of kit, with fancy ignition, but much less power and weight than the 1000-cc Superbike, meaning it needs a very different riding style. The Supersport 600 – that all of us in the team refer to as ‘the little bike’ – runs on treaded, road legal tyres, not slicks.
Some of the other real roads riders will also compete on a Supertwin – the 650-cc, two-cylinder racers, like Suzuki SV650s or Kawasaki ER-6s – or 125s and 250s, little two-strokes.
To be competitive in all the classes, you need to be able to switch from one riding sty
le to another without even thinking. A rider must be able to deal with braking markers changing – literally where you have to brake to make it around the corner in one piece. The racing line and turn-in points alter. Even the overtaking opportunities can differ. And the way to set up each of these bikes to get the best out of them is different too.
Having said all that, we put the hours in during practice week, and by the end of it I was feeling some kind of confidence. I had done a 128 mph lap, but Hutchie and McGuinness were doing 130s.
My girlfriend, Kate, had sorted a house for us to all stay in: me, her, the three mechanics, but I ended up sleeping in a mate’s camper van in the bottom paddock and, some nights, in my own van, down on the Southern 100 course. All my mechanics are top lads, but I needed my own space. They all knew me, and that I was weird, so I don’t think they took it personally.
The first race of any modern-era TT is Saturday’s Superbike, now a six-lapper for the 1000-cc bikes, machines that are more powerful and using more advanced technology than British Superbikes do on comparatively safe short circuits.
After the grief of the season so far, working so hard to get the bikes something like ready, I went into the first TT feeling all right. I finished the race in second place behind Ian Hutchinson on the Padgett’s Fireblade, but was given a 30-second penalty for breaking the new pit-lane speed limit. I wasn’t happy.
I started asking where the calibration certificates were, and when the equipment had been calibrated last, but no one came up with any answers. It seemed like they hadn’t operated with a tolerance. We’d set our bike to run at 60 kph, calculating it to the gearing and the tyre size, and had it checked by Brains, Mark Woodage, who had the formula, but their speed gun was reading 60.112 or something. They repeated that the limit was 60 mph, and I wasn’t doing 61, so surely I was doing 60. There was no tolerance. It was the first year of using that system and I don’t think they’d thought it through. There was no way we could check our speed against their radar gun, and their gun could have been slightly out. A penalty of 30 seconds was added to my race time, for being 0.18 of a per cent faster than the limit. When it’s that close, surely it makes sense to do what even the police do and run a tolerance. Yes, we could’ve have set the speed limit below 60, to be on the safe side, but we’re trying to win a race, and when TTs have been won and lost by three seconds you don’t want to give the opposition any breaks, so we set it correctly.