Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Where’s Michaela?’

  Bridget and Arai, a Great Dane and Chihuahua, were already on the scene and causing havoc around the house. Bridget, however, was living on borrowed time. She was so thick and clumsy and used to shit four or five times a day, which was just too much for any man to cope with. In fact, the only purpose she seemed to serve in life was providing something for the Chihuahua to hump. Arai, named after the make of helmet, was not only a bit too small to shag a Great Dane he was also a bit confused. So he basically tried to hump anything he could reach – her leg if she was standing up or the back of her head when she was lying down.

  While the dogs were running wild outside, work was progressing well inside the house. I couldn’t even tear myself away from the renovations during a 10-day holiday at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. I was on the phone all the time to check on progress back home where dad was helping to lay the drains and a drive.

  Michaela’s dad, Alan, also lent a hand on occasions and there were times when sparks flew. My dad tends to rush in headfirst, do it his way and then have to repair it later. Alan is a perfectionist who likes to take his time. During one operation, to level the stable floor, Alan could see that the floor was sloping and needed more stone at one end before the concrete was laid. But my dad was having none of it and they almost came to blows with planks of wood. It took one of our other friends to separate them before Michaela stormed outside and sent them both home!

  The first occupant of that stable, when it was eventually finished, was a horse called Cassie. She was trouble from the start. She was bought locally, from a couple that promised she was bomb-proof. We were told that nothing could scare this horse. If a truck drove by, sounding its air horn, this horse would not bat an eyelid. So we were told.

  I was bored one day, just after we had moved in, when Michaela suggested I should take the horse out for a ride to see what she was like. I didn’t bother wearing a riding hat as they make you look a right idiot. Everything was going smoothly until a car came into view further down the road. Cassie stopped and started backing up. Then she started to spin round and reared up. I gripped the reins tightly and closed my eyes as the driver slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop. He apologised but I told him that it wasn’t his fault. She seemed to settle down and we continued for a while along the road, before turning off down a public footpath through an area called Rocky Brook. I could now pick up a bit of speed and was galloping through the woods feeling like John Wayne. Some of the walkers, who had to dive out of the way, were not too chuffed, though. ‘You shouldn’t be in here on that thing,’ one shouted as we thundered past. This was more like it.

  On the way home, exactly the same thing happened. When Cassie spotted another car, she backed up, span round again and pulled another wheelie. This time the car nearly hit the horse. I was blazing mad and jumped down from the saddle, held the reins tight in one hand and punched her on the nose, so hard that I nearly broke my hand. The driver watched, sheepishly, as I set off back home on foot, leading the horse behind me. I told Michaela, ‘That thing’s going back tomorrow. There’s no way we’re keeping it.’

  She blamed my riding and called Jamie’s girlfriend, Andrea, who had grown up around horses, to see if she would try to ride it. Exactly the same thing happened with her, so Cassie was on her way. The people who had sold it to us were very understanding and apologetic and gave us our money back on the spot. She was soon replaced by Sultan who, although he doesn’t like men, has never posed us any problems – unlike a few later additions to the growing animal sanctuary.

  The season had almost started by the time we actually moved into Tockholes. A few months earlier, I had called Raymond to check that everything was in order. ‘Carl, there are a few problems at Ducati. I might not be your team manager this season,’ he said. I thought he was joking at first. ‘Maybe I stop at home this year and do not run the team. I cannot get the right money from Ducati.’

  I was gobsmacked, but this was typical of the way that Ducati worked. I was the last to find anything out. A couple of days later I spoke to my contact at Ducati’s owners Cagiva, a girl called Paola Martignoni, thinking the whole thing would have blown over.

  ‘What’s all this about with Raymond,’ I asked.

  ‘Raymond will not be running your team this year,’ she replied. ‘Virginio Ferrari will be running your team. You will not be affected and you can keep Slick as your mechanic’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to be told at last,’ I said.

  I knew of Virginio, a former Grand Prix rider who had held the TT F1 world title the year before my first win in 1988. He had always seemed okay, but he didn’t have the same charisma as Roche. Ferrari rang the next day to tell me we would be testing the new 916 bike in Jerez. Falappa was staying on as my team-mate and a factory bike was to be provided for Fabrizio Pirovano, who would be managed by Davide Tardozzi. Ducati also provided a bike for Jamie Whitham, under the management of Moto Cinelli’s Hoss Elm.

  It was great having Jamie on the scene again, as we had not seen much of each other since the Macau trip. But the welcome from Virginio in Jerez was decidedly lukewarm. He just about managed to shake my hand and say ‘Hello’. When I suggested we should all go out for dinner to get to know each other there was no response, so I hooked up with Jamie and Hoss. The following day Virginio approached me with a little notepad and asked, ‘Is there anything you want this year?’ Nothing sprang to mind at the time, but I was sure something would crop up as the season progressed.

  Virginio seemed perfectly nice and more professional than Raymond, but weird at the same time. ‘This is what we have planned for you today. You will ride the old 888 bike and test a lot of tyres for Michelin,’ he said before the first session at Jerez. So I only managed a handful of laps on the new bike, as the mechanics found it easier to understand what Falappa had to say about it.

  But those few laps didn’t prove anything. The bike was good – and looked beautiful – but didn’t feel great. It seemed more like I was sitting on a 500cc because, without much fairing around the engine, I felt right on top of it. It also seemed twitchy, as a lot of new bikes do. I didn’t even sit on the thing again until practice for the first round of the British championship at Donington, which was being treated as my first real test of the 916. I won both races, which delighted Ducati, as their new bike was hitting the headlines straight out of the crate.

  That performance increased expectations for the first world championship round, again at Donington in May. When a new 40-foot articulated lorry arrived, doubling up as sleeping quarters for Virginio and the team’s hospitality area, I realised that Ducati meant business this year. A hospitality area was almost unheard of until then. But nobody was more surprised than I was when I won that first race, because I didn’t like the bike one bit. Okay, it was very fast, but I couldn’t carry any corner speed. Setting the bike up needed more attention, as it was still twitchy and nervous. Jamie crashed in practice, breaking his wrist, which would prove to be part of a bizarre coincidence – I suffered exactly the same fate shortly afterwards.

  Honda were experiencing similar problems with their own new bike. Russell, on the other hand, was on a proven Kawasaki and appeared to be a lot quicker. This was the case in the second race, when he won with Slight second and me in third. I was somehow leading the championship after the first round riding a bike I hated.

  I was sure the bike would improve but I didn’t give it a chance at Hockenheim after crashing out in practice. It was a stupid crash, on the second lap of the final qualifying session. I still don’t know what caused it, as I wasn’t pushing that hard at Sachs Curve. Photographs show smoke coming out of the back of the bike, although I was also told that there had been oil already on the track. Whatever the reason, the rear end came round and the bike threw me over the top – a proper high side. My wrist probably broke before I landed, as my glove seemed to catch on the bar and locked my arm in an awkward position
. Michaela, who was pregnant at the time with Claudia, usually never watches from anywhere but the pit wall. But, as soon as I stood up, I could see her at the exact spot where I had fallen.

  It was a bad break, in two places, and the doctors decided to straighten it out there and then in the Clinica Mobile that follows the series around. It was one of the most painful things that I have experienced, worse than my broken legs. Two doctors grabbed hold of the top of my arm, another two were at the bottom of my arm, and all four pulled their hardest. I was swearing my heart out in agony. These Italian doctors, employed by the championship organisers Flam-mini, couldn’t speak good English but I think they got the message. When the bone was reset, my arm was put in a pot all the way up to my shoulder. My mood got worse when Russell won both races to claim an early 39-point lead. The next race, at Misano, was three weeks away. It was crucial that I should be fit for that date.

  Virginio drove our motorhome through the night straight to Milan, where his workshop was based, so I could see the best Italian doctor, Dr Claudio Costa. His X-ray showed that the bone had been set well, but the pot had to stay on for 10 more days. I flew home down in the dumps. Jamie came over to cheer me up and we must have looked a right old pair in The Rock pub at the top of the road, trying to eat our pie and chips, each with a pot on our arms. Some 10 days before Misano, I flew to Austria to meet up again with Dr Costa, as he was working at the Grand Prix in Salzburg. When he took the cast off, my arm quivered and flopped onto the bed. It had lost so much strength in such a short space of time. Surely there was no way that I would be back in action in just over a week.

  I was like a bear with a sore head for the rest of the weekend. Slick had driven our motorhome to Austria from Italy and had scraped its side after trying to pass another car in a tunnel that was too narrow. Accidents happen, and that didn’t bother us as much as when we found some conspicuous stains on our sheets … and curtains. He had obviously picked up some bird along the way. He was pulling girls without any problems in those days, when he didn’t have the extra pounds to carry!

  Michaela, who was heavily pregnant with Claudia, was livid and I tried to be angry but couldn’t help seeing the funny side. ‘Don’t do that in my bed again,’ I warned. ‘Go and do it in the front seat or somewhere like that.’

  My foul mood didn’t let up, even when Michaela had made a real effort to dress up for a meal we were going to. ‘Bloody hell! You’re not going out like that are you? You look horrible,’ I snapped. Our motorhome was parked within earshot of Neil Hodgson’s, who was struggling on the 125cc Grand Prix circuit. He looked horrified and his mum, Maureen, later said she had wanted to smack me in the face because Michaela was crying her eyes out. My problem is that I struggle to switch off about racing. If I have a bad result, I know that I can be a real pain for days.

  It was also around this time that I decided to call in the favour that Virginio had promised before the season had started. Slick was pretty fed up about his workload and again felt a bit isolated, working among a bunch of Italians. He wanted some help and I thought it would be good to have another Englishman around. And I knew just the guy.

  My best man, Gary Dickinson, was still working in a factory in Blackburn but I knew that he could do better for himself, as he was fairly handy around bikes. Virginio agreed and Gary jumped at the chance to start at Misano. It was all fairly new to him, and we had thrown him in at the deep end. Slick wasn’t too sure about him at first, until I reminded him that Gary would need a bit of time to learn the ropes. Gary knew that he’d landed on his feet. It was an easy life in a lot of ways. His accommodation in Italy was paid for, he did a couple of days’ work on the bike each week and spent the rest of the time drinking with Slick. He never looked back and is still on the racing circuit, working for Kawasaki in the British Superbike championship, having also worked for Suzuki for two years in World Superbikes.

  With time running out before Misano, Dr Costa had replaced the big pot with a smaller carbon-fibre cast. At last I could scratch my arse or comb my hair. But he wanted to see me again at his Bologna clinic on the Thursday before the meeting to continue with a laser treatment that was supposed to speed the healing. The cast didn’t make riding too easy during qualifying, as my hand was pushed into a strange position whenever I braked. A new cast was made, which was much more comfortable, and I qualified in 11th. That wasn’t bad considering there were riders behind me who had nothing wrong with them.

  But the race posed new problems. Although I was running well in fifth, I couldn’t use the clutch properly and had to stamp through the gears to downshift. It must have placed too much of a strain on the gearbox, because it packed in when I had fifth place in the bag. Needless to say, Russell went on to win and I was devastated again. At such an early stage of the season, I was already a massive 56 points behind. I rode the spare bike for the second race and this time managed to finish in fifth while Russell was second.

  It didn’t take long for Gary to prove his loyalty. He was as annoyed as I was that Russell was pulling away in the championship simply because I was injured. So, when the American walked past us in the paddock, Gary muttered under his breath, ‘Do you want me to break his legs to even things up?’ Russell heard him, turned round and growled ‘I’d still win, man!’ I had a quiet word with Gary that he shouldn’t really be saying things like that. That was my job!

  Falappa had won that second race at Misano – his last ever ride. Ducati had booked a three-day testing session at Albacete, after the Misano races and before the Spanish round two weeks later at the same track. My cast was off and we were able to try a few minor adjustments like different head angles or lengthening the swinging arm, the section at the back of the bike that the wheel is bolted on to. I was more than one and a half seconds faster than Falappa and he was trying desperately hard to approach my times on the third and final day of testing. Virginio told me, ‘I think Giancarlo is very confused. He cannot understand why your times are so much faster.’

  I was packing up for the day when the noise of Falappa’s bike, roaring round the other side of the track, which has slow corners and is usually very safe, suddenly merged into a dull thud. ‘Giancarlo’s crashed again,’ I told his girlfriend Paola, who was walking across the paddock with a tray of coffees. She seemed to shrug it off and sauntered off to see how he was.

  He had high sided at a slow corner in first gear and landed straight on his head – the worst kind of fall. He was taken straight to hospital and I was told he had just suffered concussion. So we continued with plans to sneak in a few days in Benidorm with Jamie and Andrea. We bumped into Aaron Slight and Doug Polen, who were also relaxing in the resort, and they told us that Falappa was in a critical condition with a blood clot on the brain and needed artificial help with his breathing.

  When we returned to Albacete, on the Wednesday before the race, the mood of the team was low and everyone was walking round with long faces. The mechanics told me that Falappa was not expected to survive the week. I couldn’t believe it.

  The least I could do to improve the mood was to win both races in Spain. On the Saturday night Michaela actually said, ‘You never know, Russell might crash out of both races and you’ll be back in with a shout of the title.’ Her prediction came true, I did win both and the points difference was back to 24. And there was even more good news as Aaron Slight had been docked his Donington points for using an illegal fuel, pending appeal.

  After Albacete, I had time to include a testing session at Mugello, to help me get to know the new fuel-injected Cagiva bike that I would ride in the British Grand Prix. We also carried out tests on the new 916 there and Doug Chandler, who was also at Mugello, was recording faster times, which I found embarrassing as he was a 500cc rider testing a superbike. But the next day they let me ride his bike. It was almost perfect and I knocked a second off his time immediately, to lap in 1 minute 55.6 seconds. I don’t think that time has been bettered on a superbike around Mugello to this day. The geometr
y of the bike had been totally altered and I could now carry much more corner speed.

  ‘I want this bike. I’ve got to have this bike,’ I pleaded with Virginio.

  ‘You will, you will. We just wanted to know what you thought of it after riding your own bike,’ he grinned.

  All this time, Giancarlo had been in a coma so you can imagine the relief when he came round during the next round at the Osterreichring in Austria. Our mechanics unfurled a huge banner containing a warning to the other riders, ‘Enjoy it while you can. The lion has awoken.’ He was off the critical list the following week but he doesn’t seem to have fully recovered from those injuries even now. Giancarlo still spends a lot of time around the Ducati team, wearing the same kind of clothes that he wore at the time of his crash. He is very forgetful and can congratulate me after a race before doing exactly the same thing five minutes later without realising. It’s a real shame.

  The impact of the bike’s new set-up was immediate as I clinched pole position at Osterreichring. Somebody then told me that I had to attend an official function on the Saturday night because I was on pole. I wasn’t keen and felt, as usual, that I was being pulled from pillar to post. I changed my mind when I was told that I had won my weight in wine. A pair of giant scales was set up on a stage and I sat on one side, while the wine was added to the other until the scales were tipped. They didn’t realise that I had jammed my foot under the carpet, stopping my side of the scales from rising. More and more wine was piled on until my foot was forced clear. I think I took eight crates back to the motorhome.