by Carl Fogarty
At Misano, I’ll hold my hand up and say that I was riding on the limit to stay with Lucchiari, who won both races by close margins. But Corser and Slight were clearly going to be my main challengers, if you could call them that because I was already 31 points in the lead. Then I had a bit of a dice with Russell at Donington but, after I out-braked him at the hairpin, it was the last I was to see of him in superbikes for a few years. He walked out on Kawasaki, using a loophole in his contract and blaming his bike, to take Kevin Schwantz’s place with Lucky Strike Suzuki in GPs. But Slight was still around for me to wind up. I actually think that I made Slight a better rider because he hated me so much for saying things like, ‘The new Honda is too good for him.’
By the next round at Monza, the other teams were moaning that the Ducatis had too much of an advantage. They claimed that the twin-cylinder Ducatis had 1000cc engines and were much lighter than the four-cylinder bikes. And their whines found some sympathy with the FIM. So the rules were changed halfway through the season in time for the Monza races and weight was added to our bikes. It didn’t make much difference to the results.
I won the first race and was leading the second with a lap to go when I had to slow down because of engine problems. Pierfrancesco Chili came past me … on a Ducati, of course. I told the press conference, ‘Yeah, I think the new rules have made a difference. They have made the Ducatis better as, before, they were a bit too light and jumped around.’ That comment annoyed Ducati more than the people it was intended to wind up, because they didn’t want things stirred up any more than they already had been.
Elsewhere in Italy, I could do no wrong. The profile of the sport over there is huge, as motor sport is second only to football in popularity. You only have to walk along the streets to see why, as the number of scooters on the road is huge. My world championship had received a lot of publicity because the fans aren’t bothered about the nationality of a rider if the manufacturer is Italian. So victory on a Ducati had made me something of a national celebrity. Later in the season, the Italian press started referring to me as the Lionheart.
Nowadays I can’t really walk down the street in Italy without having to sign autographs or having scooter riders shout, ‘Ciao, Foggy!’ My profile is also quite high in Spain, which is another big biking country, and perhaps in America as well – for the wrong reasons after Daytona! I am quite well known in superbike-mad countries like Germany and I’ve raced enough in Australia to have a pretty high profile there. The Far East is a different matter, and I would almost definitely not be recognised in Japan – most riders wouldn’t. In Italy, though, support for me is phenomenal and is still growing year by year. Only recently I was the fifth most photographed sportsman in a poll run by Gazzetta dello Sport. Not bad for a working-class lad from Blackburn.
Slight managed his first win on a Honda in the first race at Albacete by holding me up in the corners. He made the most of it afterwards, saying, ‘This is what you get when you work hard on something for 12 months.’ I couldn’t wait to put the record straight and, sure enough, I stormed to victory in the second race. I walked into the press conference and said five words, ‘Normal service has been resumed.’
But the Honda was starting to worry me a bit because it was seriously quick. If Polen hadn’t been axed at the start of the year after some slow testing sessions, robbing Slight of a proper team-mate, the two Hondas could have posed me a problem. As it was, Slight only had Simon Crafar on a non-factory Honda as back-up. And my little digs were really getting to him. When I said that his Honda would be faster than my bike in Austria at the next round, he grabbed the mike off me and sarcastically said, ‘Yep, that’s it. I’ll just wobble round the corners and blast away from everyone down the straights.’ It was his sarcastic way of saying that he didn’t think he had any advantage.
That race at the Salzburgring was a real battle, literally, but not between me and Slight. Some oil had been spilled near the start-finish line and Falappa, who had made the trip to support the Ducati team, tried to alert the marshals. They didn’t take him seriously, so he started shouting at them to put their flags out. Finally, one of the marshals pushed Falappa away and he fell over. The Ducati team saw this from their garage and all hell broke loose.
Virginio fancied himself as a bit of a karate expert and struck up the classic Bruce Lee pose. The only problem was that most of the marshals were also black belt kung fu experts. The Ducati team got a right pasting. Virginio’s nose was broken and Lucchiari’s dad’s collarbone was dislocated when one of the marshals put him in an arm-lock.
While all this was going on, I was on my way to second place after tangling with a slow rider, having won the first race. When I got back to the pits, there was hardly anyone to be seen.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked Slick.
‘You’ve missed all the fun,’ he replied. ‘Most of them are at the clinic. There’s been a huge punch-up!’
Amazingly, our team was fined for misconduct as, by all accounts, it was the marshals who were looking for a fight.
By coincidence, the Salzburgring also saw the start of another fight – for my signature for 1996. Davide Tardozzi was running the other Ducati team as Team Promotor for Ducati with Troy Corser and Andy Meklau as riders. The team had financial backing from an Austrian businessman called Alfred Inzinger, who made his money from the Power Horse energy drink. Tardozzi approached me in Austria, offering a two- or three-year deal. But I was still wary of signing for anyone except a full factory team after what had happened in previous years, and Tardozzi’s plans were only built on Inzinger’s promises. It was a good decision. To this day Troy is fighting a legal battle to try and recover money that he was not paid from 1997, when the Promotor team left superbikes and tried to set up a Yamaha team in Grand Prix racing.
Back in America for the Laguna Seca round, the reception was just what I wanted. The Yanks hadn’t forgotten my Daytona comments and they made sure I was aware of it. There were banners out saying, ‘Fuck off home Foggy’ and the rest of the crowd were either flicking ‘V’s at me or giving me the finger. I just love all that stuff as it really pumps me up and makes me determined to prove a point. I was also in the right form too, having not finished lower than second all season.
The only problem was that Laguna Seca just doesn’t suit the way I ride a motorcycle. It’s almost impossible to carry any corner speed because the corners are flat and don’t have any camber to help you lean the bike over. Instead, if you try to carry speed, you end up running wide. I crashed in practice and only qualified in 12th. ‘Not here, in front of these bastards,’ I thought, especially when they didn’t appreciate the problems. Instead, I tried to change something on the bike after almost every session, which probably did more harm than good. As it turned out, fifth and seventh places were enough to extend my lead in the championship, although Corser had moved into second, ahead of Slight.
This was not the time to be entering the unknown of Brands, another undulating circuit and somewhere I had never won. Nobody was more surprised than me when I was quickest after the first timed session. And my times continued to improve throughout the weekend until I qualified in pole.
On Sunday morning I looked out of the motorhome window to find the biggest crowd I had ever seen. The official attendance was 50,000, but I think it was more like 60,000 when you took into account the number that had climbed over the fencing. It turned out to be one of the best days I had ever had in racing. I was at the absolute peak of my racing career. I was even enjoying the travelling, qualifying and practice, which is unusual. The bike was doing exactly what I wanted it to and I could control races almost at will. If I felt that someone was catching me up, I could just put in a couple of faster laps.
Maybe my previous results at Brands had just been down to a spate of bad luck because, on that day, there was no contest. I won both races and set a new lap record. I had a 136-point lead in the championship and already had one hand on the title. It was time to party wi
th my Blackburn mates at the nearby home of Barry Sheene’s sister, Maggie Smart, and then back at the motorhome in the paddock. The drive back to Blackburn with the hangover from hell on a red-hot Monday morning was not a pleasant experience!
In the few weeks’ gap before travelling to Japan for the next round, we put up a marquee in the back garden and held a big summer barbecue to celebrate Claudia’s christening. During a game of rounders, I noticed that Jamie was really out of breath. It wasn’t like him because he was normally pretty fit. Then he went to bed early, which was certainly not like him. I even noticed that he was looking thin and gaunt at the christening.
A week later he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. The word ‘cancer’ is enough to make anyone fear the worst. But he coped very well and refused to let it get him down. His attitude was, ‘Well, I’ve got the thing, now let’s get rid of it.’ And that made it a lot easier for his friends and family to cope. He’s a tough character and underwent a course of chemotherapy, sometimes asking for double the dose, even though he knew it would knock him for six. Amazingly, having missed the end of that season, he was back in the saddle for the start of the next.
Japan provided a blip in my own fortunes, but on nothing like the same scale. It was actually possible for me to clinch the title at Sugo, if I had won both races. But I didn’t really want to win in Japan! It was a long way from home and there wasn’t much of an atmosphere about the place. It would be much better if I could seal it at Assen in front of tens of thousands of British fans.
It turned out that I didn’t have a choice. Having qualified in pole, I had just passed Slight, Corser and a Japanese rider called Yasutomo Nagai. Coming out of turn two, I had the biggest high side of my life. The back wheel had almost slid round enough to just carry on the slide. But then it fired me off with so much force that the petrol tank flew off the bike. I went so far up that I had time to run in mid-air to regain my balance. And, for the first time ever, I was able to try and limit the damage from the fall. I remember thinking, ‘This is going to hurt. Come down on your side and cushion it because, if you come down straight, you’re going to snap your legs.’ When I hit the deck I was tossed and thrown but was able to stand up and limp away with what seemed like nothing more than cuts and bruises down my right side.
The fall had been captured on the TV monitors and Slick rode straight over on his scooter to pick me up and take me to the clinic, where I tried to lie still for a couple of hours. My hand was swelling up as I had cracked a bone and I was given a couple of injections to stop the pain. Michaela was back in England at the Sky Sports studios. I rang her and said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to ride in the second race, the pain’s too bad.’
But just before the second race it started to rain, which meant there had to be a 15-minute practice in the wet. I decided to give it a tentative go, but people were coming past me easily and I pulled in and told the doctor that I couldn’t ride. Sat in the garage, as the sun came out, I changed my mind and decided to try and get a few points at least. The doctor gave me a couple more injections that he called ‘mesatherapy’ to numb the pain in my hand and foot, where I had chipped bones, and my knee, where I had stretched some ligaments. And out I went. On the start line I pumped myself up, ‘Come on, come on, you can do this.’
And I did it. I won the race. In fact, I absolutely blitzed it. If I was to chose one moment in my whole career, that was the point when I was at my ultimate best as a rider. I don’t think I could ever do that again. Right from the first corner I was bashing fairings with Nagai. Then he cut me up at the next corner. ‘Right, you little bastard, if that’s what you want.’ I passed him back and he cut me up again and almost knocked me off. I was fuming. At the chicane at the end of the first lap I passed him for a second time and turned round to give him the finger.
Then I got my head down and was off. The gap stayed at around three seconds, with one lap remaining. I eased off a bit – but so did the adrenaline. The nausea set in almost immediately. As soon as I finished, I felt sick to the core. I almost threw up in my helmet on the slowing down lap and didn’t even want to climb onto the rostrum. I was white as a sheet and had to lie down before I fainted. I had just enough strength left to hug the doctor who had got me through the race. Then the series organisers, Flammini, had the nerve to bollock me for not attending the press conference!
Like an idiot, I went for a few beers in the hotel bar on my crutches. I had almost made it back to my room when I bumped into Gobert and Colin Edwards. The Texan was another rider who I didn’t like that year. He had come over here for the first time and was one of the loudest to shout his mouth off about me and Ducati. I told him, ‘If I was as slow as you are, I’d wait until I could beat my own team-mate before I started gobbing off.’ Earlier, in my room, I had trapped a cockroach in a plastic cup, pricked a hole in the top and named it Colin the Cockroach after Edwards. And, while Colin the Cockroach was still a prisoner upstairs, Edwards said, ‘I know we don’t get on, but what you did today was incredible. Let me get you a drink.’
The pair of them got me drinking Jack Daniels and Coke, which I hated. When I made it to my room, I spewed up everywhere but couldn’t make it to the toilet so there was a big pile of puke next to my bed. My room-mate Lucchiari had been drinking the same stuff and he was spewing at the other side of his bed.
It was not until the next day that I found out that I had suffered two broken bones in my hand, the chipped bone in my ankle, a hairline crack in a toe as well as knee ligament damage. But all that was nothing compared to travelling home for 24 hours with the worst hangover ever.
Nagai had been annoying me all year, by latching onto me in qualifying for slipstream tows. He was a bit out of control at the best of times. At Assen, in the next round of the championship, he was dead. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to get away with that style of riding forever, but this time it wasn’t even his fault. Another rider’s bike had blown up in front of him and dumped oil all over the track. When Nagai’s bike hit the oil he slid off and was about to get to his feet when the bike dug into the grass, flipped up and landed on his head and chest. He was kept alive until his parents and girlfriend reached Holland, when they decided to switch off the life support machine. Yamaha pulled their team out of the rest of the series as a mark of respect.
His death obviously took the edge off my celebrations. I had struggled in practice as my hand was still sore from Sugo, and Assen is the type of track where the rider needs to pull hard on the bike through the corners. But a couple of painkilling injections dulled the pain and I clinched the world championship with a comfortable win in the first race, although Simon Crafar rode well to push me in the early stages.
What little pressure there had been was off and I was miles ahead in the second race when Nagai crashed and it was stopped a couple of laps early. I hadn’t really known him too well but this was not the time for wild champagne celebrations, just a few quiet beers. Later that week, Motor Cycle News annoyed me when they quoted me as saying that I had dedicated the win to Jamie, who was still fighting his cancer. It was embarrassing and a stupid thing to write, as it sounded as though he was dead. I made sure Jamie knew that I had been misquoted.
It was at this exact point in my career when I changed as a person and a rider. I was bored. There was nothing left to prove in World Superbikes, as I was head and shoulders above the rest on a Ducati. I was also fed up with Virginio’s lack of organisation, as was Slick. So, what was I going to do next? The answer seemed fairly obvious …
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wasted Year
The fact that Grand Prix promoters Dorna wanted me in their championship was no secret. The TV company had seen my popularity in World Superbikes and wanted to cash in. They were even offering packages of free advertising worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, even millions, to any team that secured my signature. As far as I was concerned, the Grand Prix circuit would have provided a n
ew challenge, for sure. But there was no point in me switching from superbikes unless I was going to be riding a bike on which I could challenge for the title.
Garry Taylor at Suzuki was again the first to make a move. But he wanted me to ride in the World Superbike championship, as Suzuki were intending to make a comeback in that competition.
‘Is there nothing available in GPs?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Garry replied. ‘We’ve got our riders sorted out and I don’t think our bosses will expand the team to three riders. But … wait a minute,’ he continued, ‘Kenny Roberts might be looking for a rider. I’ll see what I can find out.’
He was true to his word because I then received a call from Roberts’ co-ordinator, Chuck Aksland, who wanted to set up a meeting.
By now the other superbike teams had realised that my services were up for grabs for 1996. Neil Tuxworth was again seriously asking me to join Castrol Honda and I also had offers from Yamaha and Kawasaki, although I didn’t take them too seriously because their bikes would not have been capable of winning the title. But the lure of GPs was still strong.
Scott Russell had moved over earlier that year and was doing quite well. I knew that I was better than him and, having already raced against the likes of Mick Doohan, I knew that I could win Grand Prix races. But a ride was not just going to land in my lap. So a friend called Alan Pendry, who imported the No Fear brand of clothing which supplied some of the GP teams and had done a couple of deals with me in 1995, suggested that I travelled to the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. The aim was to show my face and quietly make contact with Roberts and Dorna. But there was no chance of doing it quietly because the media attention was amazing. I had to do more interviews than I would have done at a normal WSB round. And I seemed to be attracting more publicity than the top stars like Doohan and Darryl Beattie.