Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  That continued at Brands Hatch, where I clashed with Scott Russell for the first time. I had held him up for around five laps and, when the race was over, he flicked the finger at me. I thought it was only fair to return the gesture. This was to develop into a classic rivalry. The Americans didn’t win one race in the challenge series and the British lads loved it. But I didn’t feel like joining in the podium celebrations, so I stomped off back to the caravan on my own.

  Worse was to follow at the British championship round at Donington. I was sixth in the F1 race and seventh in a 600cc race. Having started at the back of the grid, I didn’t think that was too bad a result. My dad soon put the matter straight. ‘You’ve just finished seventh in a British 600 Super-sport race. What do you think you are doing?’ He was right. What was I doing taking part in the race in the first place? What made it worse was the fact that Niall won the main race on his new bike. I started to have big self-doubts. Maybe I had lost my edge, or was it that Danielle was due in a few months? Whatever the reason, I was suffering a crisis of confidence. Thankfully, the TT was around the corner.

  Neil Tuxworth had approached me early on in the year at the Superbike Show in London. ‘Look Carl, it’s Yamaha’s 30th anniversary at the TT this year,’ he said. ‘We have to spoil their party. Honda want to send two special bikes over. I know you said you didn’t want to do it again, but it’s a great chance for you to ride the RVF.’ It did seem too good an opportunity to miss.

  But now I had other responsibilities. I knew that Michaela was not keen on me going back to the island. She was obviously as much aware of the dangers as anyone was. And the fact that she was pregnant might also have been preying on her mind. But there was never any suggestion of her trying to persuade me not to go. In the end, the fact that I was doing so badly in superbikes probably helped me make up my mind.

  When the meeting arrived, I was a totally different person to the fired-up, aggressive and cocky rider that had competed the previous year. Instead of trying to hate everything that Steve Hislop did, this year I was happy for him to collect me from the airport. And we stayed in a cottage next door to his girlfriend, Leslie Henthorn, a former Miss Isle of Man winner and Miss World contestant. The owner of the cottage was an Australian girl, who was away during the meeting, and I don’t think we were perfect houseguests.

  First, our Chihuahua, Arai, pissed all over the cream-coloured carpet when we left him alone. It got worse. Michaela ran a bath, which seemed to take ages to fill to the top. She had stayed upstairs while it was running and it wasn’t until I returned home that we noticed the water pouring into the kitchen, as the overflow pipe of the bath was not connected to anything. We received a call from Leslie a few weeks later, saying that when her next door neighbour returned home and sat in the bath, it sank through the rotten floorboards and the kitchen ceiling!

  As a result of this new attitude towards Steve, I was far too laid back. I had also missed out on the usual road circuit build up, at meetings like the North West 200. And when I sat on the RVF for the first time, it was like a live wire and I couldn’t stop it jumping all over the place. I brought it back to the pits, my face as white as a sheet after a hairy ride.

  ‘I don’t like this thing at all. What do you think, Steve?’ I asked.

  ‘Mine seemed to be handling fine, actually.’

  ‘Bloody typical!’ I groaned. ‘I get the one you can’t ride.’

  Maybe it’s part of my mental approach to racing, to always think that the other person’s bike is better. That way, I have even more incentive to ride at my peak. I thought that Steve’s bike was quicker at the TT the previous year, and I don’t even think my bike was the best out there during the 1999 championship win. The speed trap times proved my point. The Hondas and Kawasakis were always quicker. It’s not a frame of mind that I’ve deliberately set out to develop, but it does seem to help me focus.

  It also worked on this occasion. After the next practice session for the Formula One race, I was faster than Steve. But, because I would miss the Senior race on the Friday, in order to fly out to the States for the World Superbike championship, I had to share the bike during practice with Joey Dunlop, who was to take my place. That didn’t help, as I needed as much time as possible on the RVF. By the final practice session, I was slower than Steve, although he’d set an unofficial lap record of an average 124mph and I was only seven seconds slower overall. But I wasn’t up for the race. I had scared myself too many times in the build-up and, at the kind of speeds we were forcing each other to ride at, someone was going to get hurt.

  Others sensed the same thing. The head of the Honda Racing Corporation, Koichi Oguma, was on the island and had watched us push each other to the limits in practice on the Thursday before the race. All he was bothered about was spoiling the Yamaha party. And that wouldn’t happen if we were both lying in a ditch. So, Oguma and Neil Tux-worth locked the two of us in a room and told us to come up with a team plan for the race. The door closed. I turned to Steve.

  ‘There’s no way I’m going to let you win,’ I started.

  ‘And there’s no way I’m going to let you win,’ replied Steve.

  There was nothing more to be said. When Neil and Oguma returned, I told them, ‘Thanks for the concern, but we both want to win the race. It’s not in my nature to fix a race and Steve is here all week. You can’t expect him to watch me take all the glory in one race.’ They were obviously frustrated, but there wasn’t much they could do. Or so I thought.

  It has been said that it was a classic race. I disagree. People forget that my race was effectively over after the first five miles. On the first lap, before Ballacraine, the bike mysteriously cut out and I lost around three seconds. At the first timing point at Glen Helen, I was five seconds behind Steve. By Ramsey, I had pulled that gap back to one second. But, as I went over the mountain, it cut out again and I lost more time.

  On the second lap, at Ballaugh Bridge, I had to pull in as the engine had stopped completely, as though it had run out of fuel. Just as I came to a halt, it fired back up. By now, Steve, who had started 30 seconds behind me, was just in front and we diced it out for a while. I passed him over the mountain but, as we were exiting Brandish, the thing suddenly cut out again. I anxiously looked over my shoulder to see Steve miss me by inches, because I had slowed so quickly. He must have been wondering what the hell I was up to. I tried to make signs that it was cutting out, but we were still racing and the gestures were pointless. We both pulled in for fuel at the same time, when I told him the problem. He thought I had just missed a gear. I also told the mechanics about the problems, but nobody seemed all that interested.

  I was all set to pull out again when Neil ordered the mechanics to hold me back for a few seconds. ‘I don’t want those two together on the road,’ he said. When we pulled out again, the bike continued to misfire at the end of long straights, and the race was over for me. That settled me down a bit and I finally got my head into TT gear. I started to enjoy riding the RVF and could just about see Steve in the distance. On the fifth lap, there were no problems and, as I came down the mountain before the start of the final lap, I slowed down and thought, ‘Right, I am going to smash this lap record to pieces.’

  It had been a big thing all week whether either of us could go through the 125mph barrier, the average speed of a lap. I was certain that I could do it and I flew through the start-finish. People said that they had never seen anyone ride so quickly down Bray Hill. ‘This is going to be so fast!’ I said to myself. Then, on the run down to Ballacraine, it completely cut out again. From a speed of 170mph, I was down to 5mph within seconds. Although it fired up again, I was totally pissed off. So I gave up and rode it back to finish second. The press reports paid very little attention to the problems I had suffered.

  To this day, I have not been given a satisfactory explanation as to what was wrong with the bike. A mechanic said that a small wire kept coming loose, but I wasn’t convinced. I’m not saying that I would h
ave won necessarily, as I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. But it would have been a lot closer. After that, as far as I was concerned, I didn’t expect to be returning to the TT again.

  Back with the World Superbike championship, at Brainerd, Minnesota, it was the same old story. We looked like a club outfit compared to the other teams out there. The bikes were dog slow and I finished 11th in both races. But that round proved to be a turning point in my season. Niall was behind me in both races, and it was as much as he could take. He spent the whole week on the phone, and it was obvious he was trying to sort out another ride. Having ridden in GPs, Niall was used to having money thrown at him and not having to make savings all the time.

  After one more British championship round at Brands, he quit the team. I was glad in a way, because the team wasn’t big enough for both of us. It wasn’t a personality thing, just that there were not enough funds. I was given his newer bike and his mechanic, Nick Lee, started working for me alongside Dennis Willey, who was rapidly losing interest. Suddenly, the expectations were back on my shoulders, which was good for motivation. It showed straight away, as I was second at Cadwell next time out before travelling to Japan again for the 8 hours race.

  I hated every second I was out there. Suzuka is owned by Honda, who were desperate for revenge after Yamaha’s victory the previous year. Wayne Gardner and Mick Doohan were given brand new RVFs to ride, while me and Steve Hislop were on the 1989 models that I had ridden at the TT. It seemed that everyone else was riding the very latest machinery. But that wasn’t the problem. It was Neil again. After crashing in the previous two years, his attitude was, ‘You just keep it upright and don’t do anything to ruin our chances.’ It was all ‘Steve, Steve, Steve’. Even my own mechanic spent more time with Steve than with me. I was made to feel like a spare part.

  So it was no great surprise when he was quicker than I was in practice. It showed how badly my confidence had been affected, because Steve was not a short circuit rider. He started the race, because my final practice times had been set in the wet and, I have to admit, he rode really well in poor conditions. All the time, though, as I waited for my turn, I had to listen to Neil in the garage saying, ‘Look at these short circuit wankers, crashing everywhere. There, another one’s gone.’

  Whatever he was trying to achieve, it didn’t work and, instead, placed even more pressure on me. Everyone was waiting for me to crash. I hated him for making me feel like that. So I rode like a snail, but did what they wanted and stayed upright. We stayed out of trouble as others continued to fall and we finished third behind the factory Yamaha of Doug Chandler and Kevin Magee. It meant absolutely nothing to me, because I had played no part in it. While the others went out for a few beers, I went back to the hotel alone.

  Results started to pick up in the world championship because, after Suzuka, I had set myself new targets of beating the other Honda riders, like Merkel and the Spanish lad Amatriain. My best results of the year were a pair of fourths at Anderstorp, despite the fact that Dennis was really pissing me off now. He was building a home with his girlfriend and didn’t want to make the long trips abroad. And he didn’t believe me when I complained about the bike. I think he’d lost confidence in me and would say things like, ‘Look at Doug Polen. He can ride a bike!’ before looking at me for a response.

  He knew it wasn’t in my nature to even think that I could be second best to the other riders like Polen, Rob Phillis and Raymond Roche. I knew that, on a decent bike, I would beat them. So it was a relief that he didn’t travel to the next round in Sugo, where I was promised some factory assistance.

  When we arrived at the garage, I got excited when there was a new bike waiting. But it wasn’t for me. All I got from the Japanese factory was a new exhaust system, similar to a Ducati’s. Still, I did receive a camera for finishing eighth in the second race, in a line with the fifth, sixth and seventh placed riders. Scott Russell, in fifth place, won a big Woofer stereo. If I had known that was up for grabs, I would have T-boned the lot of them off the track at the last corner!

  That trip to the Far East typified the highs and lows of the year. It had been an emotional trip to the airport. Michaela was by now heavily pregnant and, although the doctors thought they would be able to delay the birth until I returned after the races in Japan and then Malaysia, there was obviously a chance that I would not be around for the birth. Michaela drove me to the airport in floods of tears, which wasn’t helped by Bryan Adams singing, ‘Everything I do, I do it for you’ on the radio.

  Having left Japan to travel straight to Malaysia, we stayed in a magnificent hotel in Kuala Lumpur, but had to share three to a room because Neil said it was too expensive. I was on the provisional second row of the grid but he wouldn’t allow me a new set of tyres for the final session, so I slipped to the third row. So I was quite chuffed with eighth and seventh places when I arrived back in England on Tuesday, 3 September.

  The plane landed at Heathrow in the morning, so I immediately rang home. My mum answered.

  ‘I’m in London now, just about to catch the flight up to Manchester. Will someone come and pick me up at the airport?’ I asked her.

  ‘Okay dad,’ she replied.

  ‘What do you mean “Dad”?’

  ‘Congratulations. You’re the father of a beautiful little girl. Michaela had the baby last night while you were on the plane,’ she said.

  There had been nothing the doctors could do to keep Danielle inside any longer. When I came off the phone, my smile stretched from ear to ear. I wanted to shout out to everyone in the middle of the airport.

  I had already said my goodbyes to the Honda mechanics but I went rushing back to where I had left them. ‘I’m a daddy, I’m a daddy,’ I beamed. They immediately warned me that all the hard work was about to start. I naively shrugged it off. How wrong can you be!

  My dad dropped me off at home and I rushed in, splashed some water on my face and left for the hospital still wearing my Honda team shirt that I had travelled in from Malaysia. On the way to the hospital I bought a huge bunch of flowers and a bottle of champagne and waltzed into the ward like I owned the place, wearing a pair of Starsky and Hutch-style sunglasses. Everybody was staring at me as if I was a right idiot. Michaela was absolutely shattered. She took one look at me as she was rocking the baby and shouted, ‘Where have you been? Here, you can have her. I’ve had to look after her all night.’ She shoved Danielle into my arms and the swagger drained out of me straight away.

  As with all new parents, we both learned how to cope soon enough. You have to. You also have to make sacrifices, too. We couldn’t just pop out for a drink whenever we wanted to, as we had been used to before. My main contribution, apart from the usual nappy changing and getting up in the middle of the night, was helping out with the tea more often. Cooking wasn’t, and still isn’t, my strong point. But I was a dab hand at grilled chops, chips and baked beans. It was quite crafty, I suppose, because Michaela soon got sick of this every other night and was happy to get back to cooking duties. I did try other things and developed my own special recipe for chilli, putting just about everything in it like baked beans, kidney beans and peas. For the first few attempts it was clear that something wasn’t right, but we couldn’t work out what it was. Then Michaela spotted that I wasn’t draining the juice from the can of kidney beans. For some reason she does all the cooking now.

  Fatherhood can often affect a rider but, despite all these new pressures, results remained pretty consistent and I finished seventh in the world championship won by Polen – ahead of former world champion, Merkel, on the same bike. All things considered, I was pleased because it could have been a lot worse.

  There was just one race remaining, a big international meeting at Kirkistown. And, at long last, I won on the 750 – but only at a price. I beat the British champion Rob McElnea in one race, was second to him in the other but, in the final race of the year, it was almost inevitable that I would crash. I was leading and tipped off coming out of
the chicane, breaking small bones in my ankle and hand. The freezing cold made the pain 10 times worse and the Irish doctors were ultra-cautious, putting big pots on both my arm and leg. It looked as though it was going to be another winter of hospital visits and recovery. But, back in England, there was less concern and the doctors cut the pots off straight away, because the fractures were only hairline and would heal easily enough.

  In any case, broken bones were to prove to be the least of my problems that winter …

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Privateer

  Honda Britain’s experiment in World Superbikes in 1991 had proved too costly, so Neil Tuxworth told me that they would not be competing the following year. The only thing the team could offer me was a ride in the British championships. I told him that I would rather ride a moped. On that RC30, I would have been struggling to finish in the top six. So I was on the hunt for a new ride.

  There had already been some interest. An Italian businessman, who only revealed himself as Mr Bogo, had contacted me. He’d been impressed with my riding over the previous few years and wanted to run me in World Superbikes on a Ducati, with big sponsorship from Agip. Obviously, I wanted to stay in the world championships, so I didn’t even consider approaching the big names like Kawasaki or Yamaha for a ride in the UK. Bogo’s offer sounded too good to turn down. Roger Burnett, who had recently retired from racing and was trying to set up his own promotions company, acted as a go-between. He said, ‘It sounds really good. This guy will pay you around £50,000.’ There was no reason to doubt him.

  But the deal dragged on over a couple of months. I was starting to get pretty anxious.