Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  Race day coincided with the football World Cup final in the States between Brazil and Italy. The Ducati team were not impressed when I turned up wearing a Brazil shirt, which had been given to me the previous year by a Brazilian Ducati mechanic. I carried on winding them up as I crossed the finishing line following my second win of the day. Instead of pulling the usual wheelie, I stood up in the saddle and imitated Brazilian striker Bebeto, who had celebrated his goals in the World Cup by making a cradle out of his arms because he’d just become a father. Russell’s confidence had been shattered at Albacete and he was nowhere again in Austria. His 12th and 14th positions meant that, from nowhere, I was leading the championship.

  The Austrian races were finished in time to watch the World Cup final at a special marquee set up at the track. I was one of a handful of people supporting Brazil, among around 300 Italians. One of the mechanics was nicknamed Arnie, a massive Croatian bloke who looked and talked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was on crutches for some reason. He would never dream of causing trouble as he was a nice guy but, if it all kicked off, you would want him on your side – he had been known to throw Slick over his shoulder with one arm.

  The game was boring so people started chucking plastic glasses across the marquee, and quite a few hit Arnie. He managed to keep his cool until a full cup, of beer landed on his back. That was the final straw and he lost his rag. He picked up a chair and, still on his crutches, heaved it to the other side of the room. Suddenly the whole thing was out of hand. I was one of the few sober ones and tried to calm it down, as it had been a great night until then.

  The match itself went to penalties of course, and when they were over, and Italy had lost, I looked for Gary and Slick. I had specifically asked them not to get drunk, as I wanted to set off back to England straight after the game in the motorhome, not least to see Michaela who, being by now eight months pregnant, had made the right decision to stay at home. Surprise, surprise, when I found them they were both pissed out of their heads and Slick was round the back of the marquee with some bird. So I had to do the first stint behind the wheel, although they promised to help out with the maps.

  Within five miles, they were both unconscious in the back, snoring away. I was furious, especially when I got lost a couple of times. It was a good bet that Mick Doohan, who was leading the Grand Prix championship, didn’t have to drive through the night for eight hours after just winning two races.

  By 7am, there were signs of life in the back. I pulled in and shouted, ‘Right, one of you two will have to drive now, I’m fucking sick of this. I need some sleep.’ I might as well not have bothered because, after a couple of hours, I was wide awake and listening to those two idiots arguing because we were lost in the middle of Germany.

  The fuel-injected Cagiva bike that I was to ride in the British Grand Prix at Donington was totally underdeveloped. I hated the thing. It broke down twice before I reached the end of the pit lane during practice on Friday. It would come out of one corner sounding like a long slow fart then, at the next, there would be a short, sharp parp when there was no power at all. Obviously the computer-run fuel injection system was just not working properly. Every lap the bike seemed to adjust its power band, the point at which the revs kick in. And, at a meeting where I was riding a new bike and needed more practice than anyone else, I was actually getting less. Virginio had decided not to turn up, as he didn’t get on with Giacomo Agostini, who ran the Cagiva team. And Slick was not invited to join the Cagiva mechanics, so I was pretty miserable. To make matters worse, the press had built my chances up all week and everyone was expecting me to win the race.

  On the Saturday morning, the bike threw me off after almost cutting out coming out of the hairpin and I banged my hand. In the afternoon, it cut out twice going round Redgate. ‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘I’ve had enough.’ There was no point even trying to ride the thing. Ducati didn’t want me to risk injury because I was leading the World Superbike championship. But Cagiva wouldn’t let me ride the same bike as Chandler and John Kocinski, their other GP rider.

  I was obviously just a guinea pig for their fuel-injection experiment. But it would have looked bad on the Cagiva group, and Ducati, if I had just pulled out there and then. So, Claudio Castiglioni’s secretary, Paola, took me to the Clinica Mobile. She convinced the doctors to strap my hand up and I emerged to talk to the waiting press wearing an ice pack. ‘Can’t ride,’ I lied through my teeth. ‘Nothing I can do about it. I hurt my hand in this morning’s fall.’

  So I hopped on a scooter and rode away, which was perhaps not too smart as I forgot that I was supposed to be unable to ride. As soon as I left the paddock, I threw the bandage away and within an hour I was in my motor-home and driving back to Blackburn.

  Whether my mind was still at the meeting, I don’t know. But on the way home I nearly killed a family that were setting off for their dream holiday. It was dark and, as the motorhome was a left-hand drive vehicle, I checked in the right-hand wing mirror before overtaking a car in front. I even double-checked and the lights behind were the same distance away. But those particular lights were obviously those of another car as, unknown to me, the first was already alongside me. So, when I pulled out, I clipped the back end of the first car, spinning it in front of the motorhome, down the hard shoulder and banging around from barrier to barrier across the M62. ‘Oh fuck! I’ve killed them,’ I thought, and stopped to check if everyone was okay.

  Some road workers had seen the whole thing.

  ‘Did I do that?’ I asked in all innocence.

  ‘Well, yeah mate, of course you did,’ was the blunt reply.

  A policeman soon arrived and asked, ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be racing in the British Grand Prix tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ve come home,’ I said. ‘My bike was a pile of shit and I didn’t want to ride it!’

  The family had suffered nothing more than whiplash, but their car was a write-off. I was fined and docked three points for driving without due care and attention. Some would say that I’m safer on two wheels than four. Having spent so much time around Italians during my time with Ducati, I now drive like an Italian. In fact I get flashed at for going too slowly over there.

  To put the lid on a terrible weekend, Motor Cycle News reporter Chris Herring rang me two days later to tell me that Honda’s appeal had been successful and Slight’s points from Donington had been restored. Ducati announced that they would launch their own appeal and there was now genuine bad feeling between the two camps. It was around this time that I also started falling out with Slight. I think he took exception to me criticising the Castrol Honda team.

  I didn’t actually believe that anyone at Honda knew they were doing anything wrong, but I wasn’t surprised they won the appeal because they were a huge corporation. Still, it helped me to have two rivals that I hated, instead of just Russell. So, when we christened our two new Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs Scott and Aaron, I had to make sure that I won the title!

  There was another name to think about, too. Our second daughter, Claudia, was conveniently born before I had to jet off to the Far East for the next two world championship rounds. Though we both liked the name, my fixation with supermodel Claudia Schiffer was the deciding factor. If Claudia had been born five years later, her name might have been Jordan!

  This time I was on hand for the whole thing and, as every dad will tell you, it’s a fantastic feeling. What wasn’t so good, as Michaela started her contractions, was that I could see a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant out of the hospital window.

  ‘I’m absolutely starving, Michaela, I’m going to have to nip out for two pieces of chicken and some corn on the cob.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ she pleaded, ‘I’m just about to give birth any minute now.’

  ‘I can’t wait. Anyway, I’ll be back in a minute.’

  When I returned, Michaela was in agony and didn’t see the funny side when I offered her a bite of one of the pieces of chicken. ‘Get
that thing away from me,’ is a rough translation of what she said. All the photographs of Claudia straight after the birth have an empty box of Kentucky in the background next to the bed.

  My job during labour was to monitor the machine that tells you when a contraction is due. As the graph rose, I sussed it when Michaela was about to feel the pain and gave her some gas to try and relieve it. Even if I say so myself, I was getting pretty good at this. So much so, that it was becoming a bit boring. I decided to spice things up a bit. Just when Michaela was confident that her reliable husband was going to warn her when a contraction was due, I deliberately missed my cue and forgot to give her the gas. The scream was heard in Yorkshire and she made it quite clear that I wouldn’t be able to father any more children if I played a trick like that again.

  Claudia’s birth was a real boost before my WSB campaign resumed in Indonesia at Sentul. I did everything that had been asked of me to lead the first race by eight seconds with about seven laps remaining. But the machine let me down when the engine broke. Apparently Ducati were having trouble getting their hands on some new crank casings that were needed. On the back of the Grand Prix disaster, this was the last thing that I needed.

  It might seem trivial to some people – to lose one race. But it’s hard to grasp just how seriously I took every little thing about my racing in those days. I had made bold public predictions about the championship after Honda’s reprieve, claiming that it wouldn’t be long before I was back in the lead, but I was being made to look stupid when the bike didn’t perform. And there was nothing I could do about that. It’s no exaggeration to say that I felt like quitting. I just didn’t need this kind of shit. Even the fact that Jamie had secured his one and only race win, beating Slight on the last lap, was small comfort.

  My mood quickly changed when I won the second race to whittle Slight’s lead down a bit. And I was in a mischievous mood by the time of the presentation ceremony. The race organisers invited the two winners, me and Jamie, up onto the stage for a special cake-cutting ceremony. The master of ceremonies was a big stupid Indonesian idiot, who kept turning his back on us to crack jokes to the audience. But, whenever he turned round, I fired huge dollops of cream cake onto his back with a spatula.

  Jamie was literally crying with laughter and the audience was in stitches. The compere thought they were laughing at his jokes and had no idea what was happening until his brand new suit, that he’d probably saved up for all his life, was being sponged down by three little men.

  Problems with the throttle in Japan meant a fourth in the first race followed by second place, while Russell returned to form to take both wins. Now I trailed him by eight points in what had developed into a three-way fight for the title. Slight’s points were still up in the air, as the Ducati appeal into the fuel wrangle had still to be heard. That was not my concern. All I could do was take my customary double win from Assen, where Russell had another disastrous day. And, by the next round in San Marino, the French-based International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) had made their decision to dock Slight’s 17 points from the Donington races. In the end it was decided just to dock the points from the race in which the fuel was tested. But, without moving a muscle, I found myself back in the championship lead.

  Russell was quicker than I was in San Marino and there was nothing much I could do to stop him winning the first race. He was also pulling away in the second race when it was his turn for some bad luck, just as I had experienced at Sentul in Indonesia. His bike broke down and I was guaranteed another victory. With two rounds remaining, I was 18 points ahead of Slight. Russell was virtually out of it.

  Next up was Donington, where the crowd was keen to rub my rivals’ noses in it. There were plenty of banners out like, ‘Fast furious Foggy flattens fuel fraudsters’ and ‘Russell, Russell, kiss Carl’s ass, there’s no pace car and Foggy’s too fast.’ Everyone expected two more wins, but this season had taught me to expect the unexpected.

  The weather wasn’t good but had cleared slightly before the race. I was advised to try a new hard wet tyre, which was supposed to suit a drying track. I had never used one before and the gamble proved to be a disaster. From pole position, I was challenging at the front when the rain became heavier. For a supposed wet weather tyre, the grip proved completely useless and I slipped right down the field to finish in 14th, almost crashing three times on the last lap.

  I was in a tricky position for the second race. Russell rode a brilliant first race to win and claw himself right back into the championship frame. But I couldn’t afford to push too hard in another wet race, crash out and concede even more ground. Virginio told me that fellow Ducati riders Troy Corser, who had just won the American Superbike championship and wanted to establish himself on the world stage, and Mauro Lucchiari, who had taken over from Falappa, would help me out.

  Sure enough, they both came past me early on as I settled for fifth place, knowing they would let me through at the end. Or so I thought! Corser finished second and Lucchiari was third, behind none other than Russell. I was blazing mad and stormed in to see Virginio for an explanation.

  ‘Carl, it is better this way. Team orders are not the correct way to win things,’ he said.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I replied, ‘But tell me first, you dickhead. If I had known they were not going to let me through, I might have pushed harder to try and beat Lucchiari.’

  And I didn’t keep my feelings to myself. Under the headline ‘Fogarty slams team orders’, I told Motor Cycle News that it had been ‘the worst decision that I had experienced in all my career’. The paper conducted a public poll and the majority voted that it would have been unsporting to let me through. But that is typical of the British sporting public, more concerned with fair play than actually winning. I had no problem with the reasons; it would just have been nice to know what was happening at the start of the race.

  As a result, my championship lead over Russell had been cut to five points overnight, but Slight wasn’t really a threat a further 12 points behind Russell.

  The pressure was on for the final round at Phillip Island in Australia. And I had nearly four weeks to sweat on it. In many ways, Russell was now the favourite to go on and clinch the title. He rode superbly at Donington and I felt that his bike was quicker. But Ducati promised me that they would use the four-week gap to make sure my engine was in perfect working order. Russell was shouting his mouth off, saying that he didn’t have to worry about me, as he would be way out in front. I was quietly confident, and decided for once to keep my mouth shut.

  We travelled out early, as Honda had booked the circuit for a few days’ testing. Ducati muscled in for a day, as did Kawasaki, sharing the cost with their Honda rivals, which is common practice. Russell was quicker on that day but it gave me the chance to work out some minor improvements. Phillip Island is a specialist’s track, all about keeping corner speed flowing. On the second day’s testing, Russell fell off, which led me to believe that he was riding at his limits. I knew that I wasn’t.

  We had a week to kill before the race, which left time for a spot of sight-seeing or anything to take my mind off the impending races. We visited Melbourne and also took in a bit of deep sea fishing with Australian rider Anthony Gobert’s dad. The first thing loaded onto the hired boat were the crates of beer and these tinnies were cracked open almost before the boat left the dock. However, me, Gary and Slick were so seasick that we couldn’t even stand the sight of beer.

  The ship’s captain was a typical bollock-scratching, hairyarsed Aussie. ‘What’s up with ya, ya soft pommie bastards,’ he laughed. His opinion of us didn’t improve when none of us wanted to touch the parrotfish that we had caught. ‘Here, let me do it. Don’t touch that bit, though, it’s poisonous and will kill you,’ he said, after whipping the hook out without blinking. I caught eight out of the boat’s total of 11, mainly because everyone else was pissed by the time we dropped anchor out at sea.

  The break helped me relax before the race, although I wa
sn’t that nervous. My attitude was, ‘Whatever will be, will be.’ I was confident that if I did what I had been doing all year, the races would look after themselves. My times improved throughout qualifying and I was second on the grid behind Gobert. But two guys had slowed me up on my fastest lap, so I knew there was something in reserve. Again, I kept that quiet.

  Come race day, it started to rain, which was just about the worst thing that could have happened for me. It was obvious, though, from the clearing skies that it was just a passing cloud. Barry Sheene was doing some TV work and I pleaded with him to take his time and try to delay the start until the track was properly dried out. He did what he could and we all started on slick tyres, although a few damp patches still existed around the track.

  I went straight into the lead but the nerves had caught up with me. My chest felt tight and I was struggling for breath. Russell came past and I stole a quick glance over my shoulder to see who else was up with us. Gobert was behind me on a Muzzy Kawasaki but, as I looked back, I almost crashed. I hit neutral, which is like hitting an eject button on a Ducati as it shoots you forward.

  As a result I ran wide going round Siberia and the bike was about to roll at the front when I just managed to find second gear and pull it round. ‘For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together,’ I shouted, trying to pump myself up. I caught up with Russell around the back section of the circuit, where I was quicker, and pulled out of his slipstream on the start-finish straight. I knew then that my bike was quicker than his. Then I put in some really fast times and broke the lap record, which stood for a few years. The board showed +1, +2, +3 as my lead in seconds increased. Go, go go! I won the race and had one hand on the trophy. Although Gobert slowed down after passing Russell to allow him to finish second, I now had an eight-point lead.

  I lifted my hand to acknowledge the crowd but that was it as far as celebrations were concerned. This wasn’t about winning one race – it was about winning a world championship. My task was clear. All I had to do was follow Russell round to become the world champion.