Guy Martin

by Guy Martin

  Since back in 2010 I’ve been suffering with these strange thoughts. It came on gradually and I don’t know why. I’m not rude, but if I’m at a big race and I stop to sign one thing, another person always wants something, and then someone else wants something, and I’m trapped, and I have a job dealing with it. Mentally, I mean.

  I began to feel uncomfortable. Then I noticed I was beginning to have weird thoughts when I was in the middle of a crowd. And, from my experience, a crowd attracts a crowd. It’s not Chinese water torture, but it triggers odd feelings, and my mind goes adrift.

  At a race in Ireland I met a lass called Andrea who has two sons that she regularly brings to the racing. I got talking to her about stuff like this, the problems I have in crowds, because I found out during the conversation that her sister was a psychiatrist. Towards the end of the chat Andrea said, ‘You need to see my sister.’

  I made an appointment, and me and Steph travelled over to Ireland. Steph really encouraged me to see the psychiatrist. She wanted answers, to find out why I am like I am, but I don’t know if she accepted them.

  We sat down with the specialist, and spent all day filling out forms and answering questions, while we drank tea and ate biscuits. It wasn’t like a doctor’s office; we were sat in comfy seats, no desk between us. She didn’t have one of those mirrors strapped to her forehead either.

  I explained that I can be sat talking to someone, nodding, smiling and agreeing, and a thought will enter my head, like, ‘What would happen if I smashed this cup around the side of someone’s head and went crackers for five minutes?’ The people who come to see me are mega folk on the whole, but I could be talking to the Queen and I don’t think it would stop me having these thoughts. I’m just wired up wrong. I weigh it all up logically in my head before I snap out of it. Small talk triggers it off. People are talking to me like they know me, because they’ve read something in a magazine or seen me on TV. And I’m being polite, because always I try to be polite, but my mind starts wandering. I’ve even done it myself when I met one of my heroes, Mick Doohan at the Goodwood Festival of Speed one year. I blurted out, ‘I’ve read your book three times,’ but it wasn’t even his book – Mat Oxley had written it about him. He just nodded and smiled. Perhaps he was looking for a cup to smash me around the head.

  I had the cup-smashing thoughts a couple times in the practice week of the 2013 Isle of Man TT. I was sat with my friend and sponsor, Gary Hewitt, boss of the company Elas, at his house on the Isle of Man when Steve Parrish, the ex-racer and TV presenter came to visit. It was all very pleasant. We were just sat having a cup of tea, but Parrish started talking about Twitter, saying stuff like he does it to keep his profile up. My mind drifted off and I started thinking, I wonder if I should start smashing cups and take all my clothes off and go crazy, running round for five minutes.

  I picture myself doing things and it’s quite vivid. That was the first time I’d had the naked thoughts, though. I visualised myself, John Thomas in the breeze, jumping off the sofa onto the sideboard. Normally, it’s still the cup around the side of someone’s head. I never have acted on the impulse and I am pretty sure I never would, but I realised I’d better go and see someone before I do.

  At the end of our day with the psychiatrist she said, ‘There are no ifs, buts or maybes, you have Asperger’s Syndrome.’ It’s a type of autism, but there’s a massive scale and I don’t know where I fall on it. I haven’t even looked up Asperger’s Syndrome on the internet. I’m not denying I have it, just disregarding it. Other than trying not to be at the centre of a crowd, when everyone’s looking at me, I haven’t changed anything I do. I’m not famous in my garage at home. I’m not famous at Moody’s truck yard or my mates’ houses either.

  The psychiatrist reckons the Asperger’s shapes the way I look at everything. While I’ve not been brought up to be rude, I’m not bothered about offending people by saying what I think is the truth. Which is, I suppose, why people want to interview me and have me write columns for magazines. The psychiatrist made it clear that it would be a good idea not to put myself in the kind of positions that trigger the thoughts that cause this tension. That’s one of the reasons I try to stay out of the way at the TT and why I really don’t want to do media days at shows like Motorcycle Live at the NEC, Birmingham if I can help it.

  Lots of people, from race fans to team managers, marketing people, sponsors and race organisers think I’ve been awkward for not wanting to do all the PR stuff, but the truth is, I can’t stand dealing with. Some of the other riders are happy to do it. They even enjoy it. On the surface, it’s not difficult to sit and sign stuff for people who like me as a racer or have enjoyed the TV shows, but that’s just the surface – underlying it are these weird thoughts and emotions bubbling away. I’m not trying to be different or awkward, but I can’t help the way my brain has been wired up.

  The problem is all to do with this tension, not pressure. The pressure of the race or pressure of work doesn’t do it to me, even if a boss and five drivers are at work all asking for their truck to be finished right now. I can deal with that.

  I’m not turning into a recluse, I still do signings for sponsors, because they really want me to, and they’re loyal supporters who I’ve worked with for years, but we set it up so I only do half an hour. More than that and things start to get on top of me. People might think, ‘Who does he think he is? I’ve been waiting here for an hour,’ but I hope I’ve explained it. If I have or haven’t, there’s nothing I can do about it. I know I could sign stuff at the TT for 12 hours and someone would still slag me off for not signing stuff for 13 hours.

  The psychiatrist also said she thought I could love tools and machines as much as I could love a person, that I see them in the same light. I do know that people can shout and scream and have tantrums at me, and I don’t give a shit – and perhaps that’s unusual. I’m looking at them, but thinking about the next cylinder head I have to port.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE £20-PER-MILE CAR AND OTHER WAYS TO SPEND MONEY

  ‘I told myself I wasn’t having any more fast cars.’

  SINCE I STARTED earning a few quid racing, I’ve spent a big part of it on flash cars that I usually keep for a while, before waking up one day thinking, ‘Martin, what are you doing?’ Then I sell it and go back to whichever van I have at the time.

  I have owned BMWs, a Porsche and an Aston Martin, but the car I’ve owned the longest is a 1972 Saab 96 that I bought for £300 when I was 21. And I’ve still got it.

  When I bought it, the car was a dysentery brown, but I could see the potential. Me and my mates Matt, Benny, Johnny and Jonty all painted the Saab. We gave it a coat of matt black and then added hot rod flames on the bonnet and front wings. We re-trimmed it with leopard-print fake fur too.

  It was all done so we could take it to the local hunt ball. Fox-hunting is a big thing round this area of Lincolnshire. In fact, it seems bigger now than it was before they banned it. They don’t call it fox-hunting any more, just hunting. They put a trace out for the dogs to follow. They still get foxes, though.

  I’ve never been on a hunt, but we did visit the kennels when I was at junior school. Fox-hunting keeps all the Yah-Yahs happy, but the hunt ball was on our social calendar because all the farmers’ fit daughters would get dressed up and go.

  We finished the Saab just in time and it must’ve worked, because I ended up meeting a girl, Charlotte – a horse trainer, who I went out with for three years.

  The Saab wasn’t my first choice, though. I really wanted a Volvo Amazon, and the whole desire for an old Swedish family car came from a bloke called Stuart Clifford. He was a truck driver, who worked for Bill Banks’s BB Haulage. He was really into hang-gliding, and he would live over in Tenerife for most of the year doing that, but he’d come back and drive for a few months to earn some money. When he was in England he’d drive around in an old matt black Amazon saloon with Swedish number plates on it. ESO 172, I think the registration was. If he w
as ever pulled over by the police he’d start talking in a made-up language that must have sounded like Swedish, because he would get let off without the coppers ever realising he had no UK tax or insurance. He was a cool dude, in his early forties when I was in my late teens.

  The story turned bad for him when he developed cancer and went through a couple of operations to try and sort it, but the job was buggered. He’d been told it was terminal, so he went to Kirmington airport, or Humberside Airport as it’s known now, and rented a car. Next, people reckon, he bought a gallon of fuel in a can, and drove flat-out down the A46, between Nettleton and Market Rasen, aimed the car straight at a tree and that was it. Lights out.

  My mate Dobby, whose house I lived in when I moved out of the farm in Kirmington, is a retained fireman who was called to the scene. He pulled him out of the car, but it was already much too late. Stuart didn’t want to make any mistakes with this job and it wasn’t a nice scene. Dobby thought he knew who the driver was straight away because Stuart had had a finger missing for a few years. If you’re going to go out, go out in a blaze of glory. I had admiration for him, though I’m glad I didn’t have to clear up after it.

  A while later Stuart’s Amazon came up for sale. Someone else had got hold of it, but I couldn’t afford it and the engine was a bit knackered, so I ended up with the Saab 96 instead. I still always wanted an Amazon, though.

  I bought my first proper fast car at the end of 2005, a year I’d won a lot of races in Ireland. I’d always fancied a fast car and the limited edition BMW M3 CSL caught my eye. It was the stripped-out version with a carbon-fibre roof and 3.2-litre, straight-six engine. I thought it was mega. It blipped the throttle when you changed down the gears using the semi-automatic gearbox. The induction roar sounded a treat. I did a few track days in it too.

  Then, halfway through the following year, 2006, I had a mad yearning for something faster for track days, so I bought a Porsche GT3 RS. I’d have only been in my early twenties.

  The RS was the stripped-out, non-turbo 996 with a full roll-cage and a whale-tail spoiler. It was white with red stripes on the bottom of the doors, that said GT3, and red wheels. It looked like it had crashed into Halfords. I had 204 mph on the clock and thought that was probably enough and sold it. As long as I have a van, I don’t need a car, but I do like them.

  Then, in 2007, BMW came out with the V8 BMW M3. I went to the local BMW dealer in my lunch-hour in rigger boots and dirty old trousers held up with baling wire. I think part of buying that car was to show the salesman that he shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it was me who made the bigger mistake. I got the first V8 M3 in the area, but I didn’t like it. It was a big comfy thing, totally different to the CSL. It was set up more to be loaded up and driven to the golf club than hammered around Donington on a track day. I sold it and lost a fortune on it, saying to myself I’d never have another fancy car ever again …

  Still, while I’d owned the Porsche and BMWs I had always really wanted an Aston Martin. If I had nothing better to do in my dinner hour I’d look on the internet at my dad’s work. I used to visit the Pistonheads website, where I saw the V12 version of the Vantage had been released and there was one registered and on sale. That meant I didn’t have to order it and be on the waiting list. I had known this version was coming out for ages and had rung a dealer called JCT600 in Yorkshire, asking when they could get one. They didn’t even ring me back. Even though it was over £120,000 I was really tempted.

  For a few years, I’d been getting financial advice from my mate Mad Nige, and I thought I’d give him a call about the car. I’d met Mad Nige when me and Kate were in Colours Night Club, on Douglas seafront, during the 2004 Isle of Man TT. We got talking and he invited us to meet him the next day, when he’d take us up in his plane. It was my very first TT, so he didn’t know me from Adam, but we just hit it off. I loved talking to him and he looked out for me up until he died in 2011. He was an advertising salesman, but he became my financial adviser, even though he had no experience in it.

  When this V12 Aston came up, I rang Mad Nige and told him I wanted to buy the car, asking him if he thought I was stupid to buy it. He said, ‘Fuck it. Get it if you want one.’ As I said, he wasn’t a qualified financial adviser.

  I had the car for two and a half years and did just over 3,000 miles in it. The novelty soon wore off. The seats jammed. The electric windows jammed. There were faults with the paint. It suffered from bad build quality and bad finishing.

  When that particular box was ticked, the Aston just ended up sitting in a barn on the Lancasters’ farm, long after I’d left and was no longer living there or seeing them and their daughter, Kate. I think I’d only ever wanted an Aston Martin because my dad said they were mega. A bit of the attraction was buying one to take Dad out in it.

  One thing that really turned me against Astons was that I’d always thought gentlemen drove them, but then I decided it was just dickheads. What changed my view was seeing everyone drive them with the LED sidelights on. I thought they must come on automatically and you couldn’t do anything about it, but you have to turn the switch for them to come on, so people are turning them on to say, ‘Hey, look at me!’ They want everyone to know they’re driving an Aston Martin. Cocky buggers …

  When I had agreed to sell it, I was quite nervous going to pick the car up from the farm. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the farm’s fork-lifts had picked it up and turned the Aston on its roof. Kate could have, perhaps should have, tipped brake fluid all over the bodywork, but she just sprayed WD-40 on the windscreen. She wanted to pee me off, but was still too nice to do anything too bad.

  When I sold the Aston, I lost an absolute fortune on it. With the depreciation it cost me about £20 for every mile I did in it, so I told myself I wasn’t having any more fast cars. That lasted only until a friend who I stay with in Ireland, Paul Dunlop, no relation to the racing Dunlops, showed me a film of a Volvo Amazon estate that was faster than a Ferrari 458 Italia. And it was for sale. There and then we started looking for the code for Sweden and rang the owner. Two more phone calls and we’d done the deal.

  This car won an award at the SEMA show, the world’s biggest modified car show, in Las Vegas, and was voted Sweden’s coolest Volvo. It’s a 1968 Volvo Amazon, but it’s a two-door – and Volvo never made a two-door estate. The builder of the car, who works for Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg, cut the B pillars and doors out of an Amazon saloon and welded them into the four-door body. The front doors are longer, so it gives the car a much nicer look and it’s easier to get in and out of. The back doors are welded up and filled in. The roof has been subtly lowered too, meaning all the glass has had to be trimmed. It has a NASCAR rear differential and one-off 19-inch wheels. The paintwork is better than any Ferrari I’ve ever seen. The front grille is hand-beaten and took two weeks to make. The red leather interior was made by the same people who trim the interiors of the £900,000 Koenigsegg Agera R.

  The AP brakes, the hubs and the suspension struts are all from a Koenigsegg supercar. It has Öhlins suspension; FIA bucket seats; five-point harnesses; a fire extinguisher system; full roll-cage; a racing ignition … The fuel filler has been moved to the roof. The engine bay is so tidy, because things like the battery are all hidden away. It has a Sparco steering wheel and a dash out of a P1800 Volvo, because it’s slightly better looking than an Amazon’s.

  The engine is a 2.6-litre turbocharged, six-cylinder Volvo T6. The car is an extreme Volvo Amazon, but it’s still a Volvo Amazon. It makes 780 horsepower and runs on £3.80-a-litre E85 race fuel. I love it, even though at the end of 2013 the timing pulley stripped off the end of the crank and wrecked each of the six pistons and all the valves. I’d had 3,000 trouble-free miles out of it and it was going to be the last drive of the year. It definitely turned into that. Luckily I was only on the way to Caistor for a pint of milk when it broke.

  The only thing that is disappointing, other than the crank problem, is that I’ve peaked. It’
s impossible to have anything better than this car. It’s the fastest car I’ll ever go in.

  When I bought the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, one of the engines out of a Lancaster bomber, the fella I bought it from had a Ferrari F50, worth a million quid; a Ferrari F40; a Lamborghini Countach; a Ferrari 355 GTB … He had all the gear, and as lovely as it all was, I wouldn’t swap any of them for this Volvo.

  The Merlin engine is something else too. It’s a 27-litre V12. Each cylinder displaces over two litres per stroke. It makes 1,600 horsepower.

  I have to prime the engine before I start it, getting the oil pressure up. If it’s cold I have to warm the oil, with a hot air blower on the oil tank, to thin it. It is mounted on a specially made trolley.

  It can sit it at 2,200 rpm without it wanting to move on the trailer it’s mounted on. Every exhaust stub has a constant glow of flame out of it, running onto the front of the exhaust stub directly behind it. It’s angry. It’s difficult to put into words what it’s like having a hand on the throttle of this thing. I’m like a dog with ten dicks every time I start it up.

  It cost £35,000 and is out of a 1942 Lancaster Bomber, the first year of the Lancaster. It’s the same engine they used in the Spitfire. Before 1942 they used a different design of engine for the Manchester and Stirling bombers, and I’ve heard the RAF lost more planes through engine failure than enemy fire. The introduction of the Lancaster changed that very quickly.

  Mine will run on normal petrol station pump fuel, that’s held in tanks on the custom-made trailer the engine is mounted to. It only needs Avgas, high-octane aviation fuel, when it’s running masses of boost pressure, from the supercharger, and under a lot of load at high altitude.

  The Merlin lived at Moody’s for a while, before I moved it to a mates’ farm. He wasn’t sorry to see it go after what it did to his workshop. One day I decided to see if I could get the rev limiter out of it and run it a bit harder. I managed to disconnect it, meaning I could get the propeller spinning faster, and rang my boss, Mick, to ask if he wanted to walk over the yard from the offices to hear it going.