by Carl Fogarty
‘Look Roger, when will we see some money in the bank?’ I asked after the New Year had passed.
‘Bogo assures me that everything will be ready soon,’ Roger promised.
Even so, I became more and more concerned and went to my former backer, Dave Orton, for some advice. He said that we needed to meet this guy face to face.
Dave used his own plane to fly me, dad and Roger to a meeting in Geneva. Bogo said that he would be flying in from Italy in his own helicopter. We waited for him in a private airport lounge that had been set aside and he eventually appeared, all of a sudden, as though he had just stepped out of a taxi round the corner. Despite this, the meeting was all very reassuring and Bogo continued to make the right noises. He promised that he had already ordered the bikes and that he was simply waiting for the money from Agip before it was all systems go. I must have still been wet behind the ears, because all this sounded great to me and I was already thinking about where we could buy a new house! Then again, I wasn’t used to people messing me about.
Another month went by, and the excuses continued to flow from Italy. It hit me before any of the others.
‘I think he’s leading us on here,’ I told dad.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he replied. ‘He sounds genuine enough to me.’
But it soon got to the point of ‘Put up or shut up’. Did Bogo have the bikes or didn’t he? By then, he was not even answering the phone. It was a disaster and I was really upset.
The season was only a few weeks away and I didn’t have a ride. Panic stations set in. Dad started to ring round everyone, as did Roger. Kawasaki said that they already had their riders in Brian Morrison and John Reynolds, but if they had known I was available they would have grabbed me like a shot. Very flattering. But no use at all. Then I rang Neil Tuxworth. ‘I’ve just gone and signed Simon Crafar,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing much I can do, except sort a bike out for you for some of the road circuits.’
It was an unbelievable situation. I knew how good I could be on a superbike – I just needed a bloody bike.
Roger finally managed to sort one ride out, but that was in the World Endurance championship for Kawasaki France. Ironically, I was to team up with Terry Rymer and would be paid £3,000 per race, plus another £10,000 if I won the race. Terry, who was always more into the money side of things, managed to negotiate a better deal. It was not bad money, but it wasn’t a steady wage. And it was not superbikes. The World Endurance ride would do as a fall back, but there was only one other thing for it.
I would have to spend the money that I had made riding for Honda and buy my own bike. And it had to be a Ducati.
There were two Ducati importers in England: Northampton-based Moto Cinelli, who I was to deal with a lot as my career progressed, and a Manchester-based company called Sports Motorcycles, who had sponsored my dad and Mike Hailwood. Sports Motorcycles promised to help me out throughout the season if I bought the bike from them. It cost around £25,000 – and that was without any extras like wheels! I also had to buy a truck, as well as employ Roger’s old mechanic, Doug Holtom. I had tried to tempt Slick to join me, but he had already been fixed up with Terry Rymer, although that team soon folded.
It was like turning back the clock to 1989 when I was a semi-professional. I did have sponsors, like Putoline Oil, but the whole package probably cost me around £45,000. So we weren’t exactly flush. And, when Doug went out in the first few weeks buying things from Roger like a new compressor and benches, I immediately began to wonder what I had taken on. I had always known Doug, while he was working for Roger, but it’s funny how quickly relationships can change when people start working for you.
At the time, the move to being a privateer didn’t seem that much of a gamble. I hadn’t taken much notice of how much I had earned in the past. So now, when dad said ‘Sign a cheque’, I just signed it. And I always knew that I could sell the bike and truck at the end of the year to get a chunk of it back. I actually felt under less pressure than riding for a factory, because now I was just riding for myself. And I was confident that, on the right machine, I was as good as the rest of the World Superbike riders.
It was still a complete step into the unknown, though. I didn’t even have time to test the bike before the first race in the British championship, at Thruxton, from where Doug and the boys would take the bike on to the first World Superbike round in Spain at Albacete. My first time on the Ducati was on the morning of the Thruxton race, in torrential rain. I slid off, without doing any damage, but the organisers kept postponing the start time because of the conditions. There was no sign of the rain stopping and spectators started to pack up and go home. I didn’t see any point in hanging around, so set off on the long drive home, only to hear the result of the race on the car radio!
Having flown to Spain with dad, I finally had the chance to put the Ducati through its paces. Although I didn’t feel as though I was riding all that quickly, the practice lap times were good. It felt completely different to the Honda, much slower going through the revs, up to a maximum of around 11,500, compared to the 13 or 14,000 of the RC30. This bike was smooth. But the weather for race day was poor and, after a cautious ride in the first race for a 12th place finish, I gambled badly on intermediates for the second. In the wet first part of the race I was almost leading but the track dried out, my tyres were destroyed and those riders who had gambled on slicks charged through to leave me in 10th.
In the weeks before the next WSB round at Donington, I was second in two British championship races behind John Reynolds and was slowly remembering what it was like to go into a corner without feeling that I was going to lose the front end. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though. Doug was trying to dictate things more than he should have been. We were paying him £350 a week, which was an obscene amount in those days. A lot of today’s mechanics aren’t paid that much. But everything had been so rushed that he had us over a barrel, because he seemed to be the only person who knew much about the bike, having spent a lot of time with Sports Motorcycles during the winter. They were also slow in delivering their promises of financial help, so the whole venture was starting to cost me a fortune. At that stage, the plan was to race the bike for a few more rounds and then concentrate on the World Endurance championship for which I already had a guaranteed ride.
Donington changed all that. I was one of the quickest in the first practice session, despite the fact that the bike was misfiring. In the next session, I fell off when it jumped into neutral. Yet I was still fifth or sixth fastest. ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought, ‘I haven’t even got going yet. All I need is a bit of luck with the bike.’ The guy from Dunlop, Phil Plater, noticed my times and offered me some better quality tyres that Doug Polen, the reigning world champion, was using. ‘They should help you,’ he said. Sure enough, I set the fastest time straight away. I couldn’t believe it, although the second group of riders still had to go out for their final session.
I was sharing a garage with Terry Rymer, who had also taken a step backwards, leaving Yamaha to set up his own Kawasaki team with Mobil 1 sponsorship. It was the first time I had really spent much time with him and we started to get on a lot better. He was in the second group, so I challenged him. ‘Right Terry. Go out and beat that.’ He didn’t, but surely Polen would go faster? I paced nervously up and down the pit lane, staring at all the garage monitors to keep a check on things until the very last rider returned.
Pole position was safe. It might even have been the first time that I had qualified on the first two rows. Suddenly, the whole world was my friend again. I wanted to stop and talk to everyone in the paddock. For the first time since 1990, I felt I could hold my head up high. A privateer in pole position – it was almost too much to take in.
Having pulled comfortably away from the pack in the first race, I built a three-second lead coming into Goddards, a hideously tight left-hand corner which is bumpy in the middle. I was later told that the angle at which I was leaning the bike over appeared to defy gr
avity. And it must have been that bit too much, because I slid off in the most pathetically slow crash imaginable. But the engine was still running, so there was still a hope of rejoining the race. I heaved the bike up and was about to jump back on when I noticed that the footrest had been knocked off. I slumped over the bike and burst into tears. I was crying my eyes out. Having worked so hard to bounce back from the disappointments of 1991, this was another massive kick in the teeth. Back in the paddock, I shut myself away in the caravan with Michaela, who was just as devastated. It was an all-time low and I felt like jacking it all in.
The last thing I needed was for dad to storm in and start playing Holy Hell with me for coming off. ‘What were you playing at? You wouldn’t get Wayne Rainey doing something like that.’ It was completely out of character and brought out Michaela’s protective streak.
‘I can’t believe you’ve actually said that, George. You, of all people, should know better. He was riding his heart out, out there. Do you think he meant to fall off? Don’t talk to him like that!’
Shortly before the second race, he came back sheepishly. ‘I didn’t mean what I said before,’ he said. ‘You know we’re all behind you. Go out and do your best son.’
My best was good enough. After a poor start to the second race, I began to pick riders off left, right and centre and again pulled away comfortably. The win was there for the taking – until the bike started to jump out of gear with a couple of laps to go. ‘Please God, no! This surely can’t happen,’ I thought. The problem made me push even harder and I set the new fastest lap on the way to winning my first World Superbike race – the biggest win of my life up to that point.
From being inconsolable a few hours earlier, I was ecstatic but, at the same time, emotionally drained. There were more tears all the way round the lap of honour. I felt that I could stick my finger up at all the doubters, who thought that I had moaned about the Honda too much in 1991.
No one had given me a chance of winning at Donington as a privateer. So it was a case of ‘Fucking right! I’ve shown you now that I’m the best rider in Britain and capable of beating the best in the world. I’ve proved it, now that I’ve got a bike that is working for me and doing what I want it to.’ The Ducati was by no means the fastest thing out there, but it didn’t need to be at Donington, as there are no long straights and winning is all about carrying corner speed.
My financial plight had obviously touched the British fans. A van driver handed over a £20 note after I had signed an autograph saying, ‘Go and treat yourself to a few beers, you’ve deserved it.’ A policeman sent £50 through the post, urging me to carry on despite the costs. And a businessman gave me a £5,000 cheque in return for me carrying his sticker on the bike. He was a very quiet, strange chap, who started to tag along for a couple of meetings after that and became a bit of a pain in the arse. But he was getting so much publicity through me that he sent me another cheque for £15,000, although that bounced and we never heard from him again. But, with all this faith in me, there was no way that I could turn my back on World Superbikes.
Ducati were also impressed. They gave me a spare engine for the rest of the season, which meant a lot on a shoestring budget. It wasn’t a factory engine, like those of their other riders, Doug Polen, Giancarlo Falappa and Raymond Roche, but it was good to have as back-up. Phil Plater at Dunlop also pulled a few strings to guarantee free tyres for the season. So I was on a massive high before the first round of the World Endurance championship at Le Mans – my first 24-hour race.
Everyone expected sparks to fly between Rymer and me. But, now that the initial rivalry was out of the way, things were fine. Any bad feeling had probably been down to me being ultra-competitive when he first appeared on the scene. The third member of our team was a Belgian called Michel Simeon.
My inexperience was obvious at the start when, after sprinting across the track, I forgot to hit the start button and was left standing by the other 60 bikes. But the Kawasaki was not a bad bike to ride and, by the end of my first 50-minute stint, I was almost riding like it was a short circuit race. Before handing over to Terry during the refuel stop, I had made it back up to second place behind another Kawasaki team featuring Alex Vieira and Steve Hislop. The next mistake I made was continually tucking into the incredible Kawasaki France hospitality during my rest periods, so I felt a bit sick.
And then, at around 4am, I made the biggest mistake of all. Each of the riders has their own space in one of the massive trucks, with a sink and somewhere to lie down. After one of my stints, I put my head down and the next thing I knew, one of the mechanics was hammering on my door ‘Carl, Carl! Just 10 laps to go!’ But I’m not one of those people who can have a nap and wake up straight away. If I fall asleep, I’m out for the count. So I didn’t know what day it was. Having fumbled around for some coffee and orange juice, I managed to heave myself into my leathers and jumped back onto the bike. One of my eyes is lazy at the best of times, and riding at night made that problem worse. So, for the first couple of laps, I was on autopilot and almost fell off twice.
When the sun started to rise, I got my second wind and, having eaten a lot of chocolate and energy food, I was focused back on the race, which we were leading comfortably by three laps. The other Kawasaki team had broken down with a snapped camchain, and our team bosses were worried that the same thing would happen to us. So we knocked off the gas and lapped at around 10 seconds slower. Sure enough, the Kawasaki, which was a pretty good bike to ride, started to rattle badly. It didn’t look good. We needed a plan.
It’s not unusual during a 24-hour race for the crowd, which was massive at Le Mans as many had camped overnight, to invade the track before the race has finished. With the bike on its last legs, this didn’t seem a bad option. Nearly the whole of our crew, as well as the two other riders, sat on the pit wall and egged the facing crowd to come onto the track. And, when they did, there was no option but for the marshals to bring out the chequered flag with an hour still remaining. We had won at the first time of asking. I didn’t care that we received some stick in the press for our unsporting methods! It was just a fantastic new feeling. To spend so long on the bike, and win a race that I thought was never going to end, was brilliant. Imagine how gutted riders are when they race for 20 hours and then break down! It all seemed pretty straightforward to me.
‘Hey Steve! We’re going to piss this championship,’ I told Hislop, cockily.
‘It’s not as easy as all that,’ he warned.
Our team packed up and drove for an hour or so, to spend the night in Paris before a morning flight back to England. I went straight to bed at 7pm, but felt really weird. Every time I tried to close my eyes, it felt as though I was still riding the bike through a dark tunnel, with lights shining brightly. All of a sudden, I would come to a hairpin bend and wake up with a start. It felt as though I was hallucinating for more than an hour, before I finally drifted off. Even though I felt like a zombie back at home for a day or two, it soon wore off as I was still on a massive high.
The win at Le Mans had eased money pressures a bit, but the next races in Britain seemed heaven sent for me to earn some more cash. Donington and Brands staged two £5,000 Dash For Cash shoot-outs – where the winner takes all the prize money on successive days. As far as I was concerned, the money was mine. Nobody would be able to get near me in this form. It was a different story when the clutch went on the first lap and I dropped back through the field. My race looked doomed but, amazingly, the problem cured itself and I soon had leader John Reynolds in my sights after riding, head down, like a madman. When Reynolds broke down, the £5,000 was in my pocket. I could do no wrong. Even so, I wasn’t too confident about repeating the result at Brands, a circuit that I had never enjoyed. Until, that is, I claimed pole position. This time, though, the Ducati showed its unreliability. As I slowed down to take my position at the front of the grid, the fuel pump broke and the bike cut out. While the other riders flew off, I had to push my bike off the track. Fi
ve grand down the drain, just like that.
There were more teething troubles in the next WSB round at Hockenheim, as the engine blew in practice and I was brought back down to earth in the races, where it was obvious my bike couldn’t live with the best on the faster circuits. It was a similar story at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, where I qualified on the second row. When the green light showed, the bike was revving like mad but I was stood still. As I had let the clutch out, it had sheared through the sprockets because someone had not inserted the metal collars that the sprockets sit on. All this time, Sports Motorcycles were promising support and spare parts, which I wrongly assumed would be free, in return for me carrying their stickers on the bike. So, imagine my shock when a bill of around £10,000 for these parts landed through my door after the Spa round. Needless to say, that was the last time we had anything to do with them. We’d had nothing but reliability problems with the bike, in any case.
I was not prepared to ride the Ducati at the TT, because it was so unreliable. But I needed the cash and, in the end, I was relieved when Yamaha offered me a ride, on good money. I also wanted to put the record straight after the problems I suffered in 1991. The Yamaha guys, Andy Smith and Jeff Turner, were good to deal with and my team-mate was Mark Farmer, who died at the TT a couple of years later in 1994. Their normal rider, Rob McElnea, didn’t want to race on road circuits. I had always wanted to ride this bike and, while it was not as fast as the RVF or the RC30 Hondas, I could really push it through the corners. I was leading the F1 race by more than 30 seconds and was really pleased that I was going to break Honda’s 10-year dominance of the race for Yamaha.
Then, at the top of Snaefell mountain at The Bungalow on the second last lap, the gearbox went and I had to coast down the mountain with my hand on the clutch in case it locked up. In fact, I almost crashed at the bottom when I instinctively tried to change gear. I was devastated, more for Yamaha and Dunlop than for myself. When the engine blew in the Supersport 400 race, the pressure was on me for the Senior race at the end of the meeting.