Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  Despite this, I still probably didn’t appreciate the dangers of the track at that age and led our race at one point. Then, having stopped for fuel, I was desperately trying to catch up again when I tangled with a slower rider and crashed out entering the first turn, one of the slowest corners. Luckily, I was sliding onto the safety of the in-field run-off. I escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but didn’t expect the reception when I limped back into the pits. Neil Tuxworth was not one to rant and rave. Whenever something was bothering him, he would bottle it up like a spoilt child. And the fact that both of us had crashed out when we had a chance of winning was really bothering him. He did not speak to us all the way back to England.

  All in all, though, I’ve always got on very well with Neil and we have had some laughs. That’s mainly because he cannot have a conversation without talking about tits and fannies. He is also quite tight. In my experience he doesn’t buy anything himself. I have lost count of the number of cans of pop I have bought for him in Japan because he does not want to break into a yen note. He collects anything, and never leaves any tips. So you can imagine what he was like as a team manager. There was one set of tyres for practice and maybe, if you did well, he’d give you a new set for the race. So, even though we were factory riders, he was not exactly throwing money at us.

  That seemed to change at the first World Superbike round of the year at Jerez. Our eyes lit up when Jamie and me travelled business class, along with a load of top officials from the Chiswick headquarters of Honda Britain, who were attending a meeting out there. I hadn’t even had a chance to get used to the fact that I could turn up for a meeting in a car, and not have to worry about transporting the bikes in the horsebox. We were also booked into a top hotel in Spain and were beginning to think that this lifestyle was just a taste of things to come for the year. You can imagine Neil’s reaction when he discovered that it was all a big cock-up and that we were supposed to be on budget packages, and that he would have to foot the bill.

  We were expecting to blitz the World Superbike riders, like reigning champion Fred Merkel on a factory Honda, Raymond Roche on a Ducati, Fabrizio Pirovano, and the British pair of Rob McElnea and Terry Rymer on the Loctite Yamahas. But we had the shock of our lives at Jerez. Not only did the bikes, delivered by a Ready Rent-a-Van hired in Louth, arrive too late for unofficial practice, we found the competition really tough. Jerez was one of the many tracks where the front handling problems of the Honda were horrendous. I finished 14th and crashed out of the second race after tangling with Pirovano for eighth place.

  The second round of the World Superbikes at Donington went a lot better with two sixth places, the best results of the British riders. Then, after a couple of decent results at Sugo and in the North West 200, I turned my attentions to the TT.

  This was my burning ambition for the season. I was desperate to win at least one of the two big races, the Senior or the Formula One. I now knew what I was doing, having learned the ropes the previous year. After his performance the previous year, when he won three TTs and smashed the lap record, everyone was still talking about Steve Hislop, who had joined me as my team-mate for the meeting because Jamie didn’t want to race on the roads. Steve was a decent guy, quite quiet, although if you did get him talking, it would always be about himself. But I hardly spoke to him in the build-up to the races. I wanted to hate him because I was so determined to win. This was probably the first time that I had tried to psyche out an opponent. I told everyone, ‘There’s no way Steve Hislop is going to beat me this year.’ Jamie had come over to the island with his mates to go trail bike riding. I think even he got sick of me saying, ‘I’m the best, I’m going to beat Hislop.’ Whenever he was asked for a prediction, he replied, ‘Foggy is going to win, definitely. The way he is talking, he has got to win.’

  After the first Monday practice for the Formula One race, Steve started to complain that I was faster. ‘Carl is riding stupidly. He’s dangerous. The weather wasn’t good enough to ride like that.’ I thought to myself, ‘You were the one riding the kerbs last year, Steve.’

  By the time the race arrived, I think I had pretty well done his head in. My only worry was that I would pull a muscle in my arm during practice from heaving the bike round the corners. For the first year, riders set off on their own at 10-second intervals. He was number six and I was 20 seconds behind, riding number eight. The fact that I was behind Steve also unnerved him. By lap two I had caught him and we were level going down the long and bumpy Sulby Straight, despite the fact that I had to keep popping my loose rev counter back into place. His bike was quicker, but I was determined not to lose. Approaching the tight right-hand Sulby Bridge corner, it was a case of ‘Who’s going to brake first?’ Then… ‘Shit! I’ve got to brake now.’ I somehow got round the corner but he ran wide and had to work the bike back round to face in the right direction. I was away and he retired on the next lap, claiming there was a problem with the brakes. When I asked his mechanic about the problem, he just shrugged, as if to say, ‘There was nothing wrong with his brakes.’

  It was, without doubt, the biggest win of my career so far. I was on a massive high.

  There was a five-day gap before the Senior race, during which I finished second in the Supersport 400 behind Dave Leach. I had a lot of respect for Dave at the TT, but felt that I would have won the race if we had set off as a pair, instead of me starting 10 seconds in front. I had beaten Steve again, and that niggled him even more. I also rode in the 600 race, which I didn’t enjoy, especially when the bike spewed out oil approaching Brandish, one of the fastest parts of the circuit. With the back wheel sliding round, it was a miracle that I kept the bike upright to avoid hitting the banking head on. This was just one more warning of the fine line between escape and disaster.

  The weather was poor for the Senior race and the start was put back a few hours. I panicked over the tyres as it could have been snowing on the other side of the island on a day like that. Having seen that Steve had chosen cut slicks, I went for the same and set off like a bat out of hell. I could have come off after running wide at the Quarter Bridge roundabout but passed Leach almost straight away before nearly hitting the wall at Union Mills because I was pushing so hard. The first signal told me that I was first equal. I thought, ‘Who the hell is with me?’ Trevor Nation had stayed with my pace on his Norton. Coming out of Glen Helen, I could see Steve in front. ‘Come to daddy!’ I reeled him in and went underneath him at the village of Kirkmichael. I had made up about two seconds a mile and was leading by 22 seconds at the end of the first lap, which is some going. Hislop had pulled in at the end of the first lap, claiming that the conditions were too dangerous to race in.

  Coming down the mountain at the end of the last lap towards Creg ny Baa with the finish line in sight, the emotion of the moment became overwhelming. I began crying for the first time ever in a race. This was a race that I had seen my dad try and win so many times. It even meant more than the F1 win, earlier in the week. This was the main race, before Formula One was even invented. To hold those massive trophies, which had been around since 1907, was an incredible feeling. The double TT victory still ranks as one of my biggest achievements.

  To achieve that success, I had pushed myself to new limits of bravery and skill. I had proved my point and saw no reason to risk my life on the island again. At the end of the week, I confirmed the speculation that I expected it to be my last TT.

  I said, ‘I’d rather concentrate on one thing in the future. If I do a full season of World Superbike, which looks likely with Honda, there’s no way I could do the TT. If I were lucky enough to get a Grand Prix ride, it would be the same. Plus the prize money’s not very good. When Joey Dunlop won here five years ago, he got 10 grand plus a lot of start money. But now you only get six grand for winning and it costs the earth in hotels, ferries – you name it. All the expenses have gone up but the prize money’s come down. It annoys me a bit.’

  I wouldn’t have dreamed of shooting my mouth off
like that a couple of years earlier. But the world titles and high profile wins at the TT had improved my self-confidence and I was no longer fazed by interviews. Already I was developing a reputation for speaking my mind and slagging everyone off. And, for the first time, it landed me in hot water.

  At the end of the week, I received a warning from Honda after a story appeared in Motor Cycle News. It quoted me saying that I was a better rider than Terry Rymer and that the only difference between us was that the Yamaha was a better bike than the RC30. I had given the interview after a few beers in a nightclub, celebrating the Senior win. As always, I was just trying to be honest and tell the truth. I felt I was the best rider in Britain, but Rymer was beating me because of the front end handling problems. These seemed worse for a rider who carried a lot of corner speed, as I did. Had Rymer been on a Honda, he wouldn’t have been able to see which way I was going!

  I suppose it didn’t help that I wasn’t great at setting the bike up. My approach had always been to try and ride round problems, without worrying about the set-up. It was only after the inconsistency of the 1998 season with Ducati that Davide Tardozzi urged me to pay more attention. He said, ‘Stop trying to ride fast laps. Think about where the bike is not quite right, where it is running wide or chattering.’ So I improved on that side of things during 1999. I don’t think that I was ever hopeless at it, but I could have contributed more. Other riders were just as bad as I was, but tried to hide it by talking a load of crap.

  The problems with the bike were not as bad on the road circuits, where you don’t lean over as far, and I breezed through the FIM Cup without any competition. I won in Portugal before beating Rymer and Rob McElnea in the British championship at Knockhill.

  It was at about this time that news had filtered through that Honda were on the look-out for a rider to replace the injured Pier-Francesco Chili in the British Grand Prix. My name was in the frame but Honda’s priority was to retain the F1 TT title. So I had to fly to Finland under protest, pleading with Neil Tuxworth to get me the Grand Prix ride. Phillip McCallen, who had a similar arrangement with Honda as I’d had the previous year, drove my bike out in his van. He eventually turned up, with the van smashed to pieces and having spent a night in a Finnish police station, for running into, and killing, a moose.

  The weather was appalling at Kouvola but, in those days, I was almost unbeatable in the wet. Nowadays I’m shit. I have tried to win races but, again, because I lean so far over on short circuits, I usually crash. But I was in a class of my own for that road race and lapped everyone to win the title for the third time, even though it was now just called the FIM Cup and not the TT F1 World championship. But there were hardly any celebrations. That title no longer mattered to me. I was pissed off because I was sure that somebody else would probably have been offered the Grand Prix ride by the time I got back to England.

  Neil Tuxworth was waiting at the airport. It puzzled me why he was there. ‘I’ve got some good news for you,’ he said. ‘Honda want you to ride the NSR500 in the British Grand Prix.’

  Yes! This was it – the big time …

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Big Time

  As always with Neil Tuxworth, there had to be a downside. Honda Britain decided to release me from my contract while I was racing for the French-based Roc team in the Grand Prix. It was just his way of saving a few quid and I couldn’t have cared less. This was the big chance I had been waiting for. If I went well at Donington, there was a chance that I could secure a ride for the following season.

  Before that, though, we had to slip in another Suzuka 8 hours. I was riding for the same Takada team, again with Steve Hislop as my team-mate, but this time Neil also travelled with us, so there wasn’t as much mucking about.

  During the race exactly the same thing happened as the previous year. I was going well in seventh or eighth – too well. At the second turn, I came off and the bike was mangled again. It took the mechanics 15 minutes to repair, but we were effectively out of the race. Neil had a face like thunder and the rest of the team, apart from Steve, were also sulking, which was pretty pathetic.

  Neil made my life hell for the two days travelling home. If I tried to have a laugh that night, or at breakfast the following morning, he would be ready with his little digs, ‘Thank God we’re getting rid of you now. You can go and crash that 500 bike instead.’ These were hurtful things for a rider to hear. As a team manager who used to ride motorbikes, he should have known better. That’s exactly the wrong way to treat your riders. He seemed to have forgotten everything I had already won for his team. I was so close to smacking him one and walking out on Honda Britain.

  Within a day of getting back to England, Neil was on the phone as if nothing had happened, asking me if I wanted to stay at his parents’ farm while I tested for a day at Cadwell Park before the Grand Prix. The idea was to meet the Roc team, run by Serge Rosset and a German called Dietmar Mayer, and sit on the NSR500 before the big day at Donington. There was some oil down on the track, so I took it easy for the first few laps. Even so, the bike felt pretty good, so they asked me to take it up to 12,000 revs in every gear. I couldn’t believe how fast it was.

  When I came in, one of the mechanics said, ‘Hold your hand out!’ It was shaking from the adrenaline. I asked for the bars to be moved out a bit, for extra comfort, and broke the lap record when I went out again. Mind you, I have always liked Cadwell and hadn’t even experienced the front handling problems with the RC30 at that track. I left Cadwell thinking I was going to win the British Grand Prix that Sunday. But I arrived at Donington thinking someone had swapped bikes!

  The same bike was awful to ride, as though the wheels had been put back on out of line. And, while everyone was friendly enough in hospitality, nobody seemed too bothered about my problems with the bike. If it had been my current boss, Davide Tardozzi, he would have bent over backwards to make sure that everything was right for me. I soon got the impression that I was only there to put the bike on the track and keep the French TV sponsors’ logo exposed. I felt cramped and uncomfortable, but nobody wanted to help by changing the footrest positions or raising the bars. I could out-brake other riders, but couldn’t carry any corner speed and felt that I was going to crash at every turn.

  Even so, I qualified in 11th and, in the race, worked my way up to seventh. ‘These guys are no better than me. They are going well because their bikes are working right,’ I thought. ‘It might just be me, though. Push it and see.’ On the third lap, as soon as I pushed that little bit harder at McLean’s Corner, I crashed out. I picked myself up, looked into the crowd and saw the huge disappointment on their faces. One guy offered me a can of beer and said, ‘Forget it Foggy, there’s always next time.’

  It suddenly dawned on me that the crowd had really wanted me to do well. I was the next big prospect, as Niall Mackenzie was the top British rider but he was never going to win anything. I had let a lot of people down as those fans had been starved of success for so long – and deserved better. From that moment on, I wanted to put things right for the fans, as well as myself.

  Despite the fall, the Roc team were quite impressed and offered me another ride at the next Grand Prix, at Anderstorp in Sweden. Before the race, I stated publicly what I had privately thought during the Donington race. I might have been up against the likes of Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz – proper racing legends, not like the current crop of Grand Prix riders – but I really didn’t think they were anything special. ‘They are not that good,’ I was quoted in the press. ‘I was catching most of them up in the corners. The only place I was losing out at Donington was in the middle of the corners, where I was losing the front end every time that I tried to go fast.’

  They hated me for saying that. Mayer took great delight in telling me that the others were now taking bets to see who could out-brake me. And Rosset didn’t seem interested at all. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that this lot were a bunch of arseholes.r />
  The Swedish circuit suited me more than Donington, but I was still experiencing the problems at the front of the bike. As a result, I qualified around 13th, probably the last of the factory riders. In the race, I had a brilliant start and was fourth at the end of the first lap, learning all the time from the rest of the big name riders. I needed a decent result after what had been said, and my sixth place finish, after a real battle with Jean-Philippe Ruggia and Juan Garriga, was not bad at all, especially as I still felt that I could do a lot better. All of a sudden, the Roc team were a bit more interested.

  Chili’s injury was taking longer to heal than expected, so I was offered further rides in the Czech Grand Prix at Brno and the Hungarian round at Hungaroring. I said, ‘Okay, but on one condition. I want the team to start helping me. I want the bike setting up properly. That means different bars and different footrests.’

  I arrived in Czechoslovakia, as it was then, and nothing had changed. I crashed in practice, when I lost the front end, and by this stage I hated riding the thing. I wasn’t even given grade A tyres to use, as they were saved for riders with a chance of winning the championship. So, after another good start, I dropped back through the field, after two or three scary moments with the front end, to finish 10th, having been passed by two riders on the last lap because my tyres had deteriorated so much.

  Hungary saw my first ever run-in with Mick Doohan. I came in after a quick first practice session, during which I had set the fourth fastest time. Out of the blue, the Aussie stormed into the garage shouting, ‘What the fuck do you think you were doing? You mad bastard, you cut me up; you fucking well should have seen me.’