by Carl Fogarty
It didn’t help his mood when we went to play golf at Blackburn Golf Club and he put his first shot into the allotments next to the first fairway and smashed a greenhouse window. He had also heard that Nick Goodison had complained about him, but I couldn’t believe that Nick would do that. Those few days were not a bundle of laughs, because I was still depressed about Donington.
My mood had not changed by Hockenheim. In all honesty, I didn’t really want to leave my motorhome. I was just sick about everything that had happened. Surely the team should have been bending over backwards to make sure that I was okay. That’s what my current boss Davide Tardozzi would have done. I was in a new team and had just lost my mechanic. Yet nobody was trying to make me feel wanted. And I was sure that Slight was loving every minute of it, smirking behind my back.
Yet another crash in practice shattered my already fragile confidence. I was convinced that I had broken my wrist but, when the ambulance took me to the clinic, there was nobody waiting for me from Honda to check how I was. Nobody even called into the motorhome to see if I was okay.
Slight won the first race, while I clawed my way up to fifth from a low start on the grid. I have always been a bad loser and couldn’t stand the thought of having lunch in the hospitality compound, where Slight would be celebrating. Michaela brought me some pasta from hospitality, so that I could stay out of the way in the motorhome.
But I wasn’t even safe there, as Danielle, my own daughter, had turned on me by then. She had obviously inherited my competitive streak and was disgusted that I was losing races.
‘Why are you not winning any more, daddy?’ she growled.
‘Daddy had a problem with the bike,’ I said, apologetically.
‘No, not the bike. It’s you,’ she said with a stony face. ‘When are you going to win again?’
‘I’ll win the second race, don’t worry,’ I assured her, without much conviction.
I had probably never felt as low in racing and, at that moment, I was planning to quit as soon as I got home.
As I prepared for the second race, I spotted the mechanics pushing our two bikes back to the garage from the compound in which they are held after the race to be scrutinised. For the first time I noticed that Slight’s was a lot higher at the back compared to mine. It set me thinking. After studying some information on Aaron’s set-up, I decided that lifting the rear end higher might stop me from running wide at corners and might help turning into corners. It could make the bike less stable down the straights, but that was a risk worth taking. The changes were made and I got a flying start.
It was a massive improvement. With five laps remaining, Slight and John Kocinski, who had taken my ride on the Ducati, were holding me up. At worst I was going to be third but I could almost feel everyone willing me on to win – the people at home, the press, half the paddock, and Danielle, of course, whose outburst was probably another big reason behind my new attitude. I was in the perfect position entering the final lap. And whoever enters the stadium section called the Motodrom first usually wins the race at Hockenheim. Slight would be good on the brakes for the final bend, I knew that. It didn’t matter. Because, wherever he braked, I was going to brake later. Sure enough, I out-braked him, held on and won the race. I felt as though I could stick my finger up at the world again and say, ‘Fuck you lot.’
All of a sudden, I couldn’t hear the digs from Colin Edwards. In fact, I was so pumped up that I wanted to drag him out of his motorhome and say, ‘What are you going to say now, you tosser?’ Chris Herring told me that the pressroom went wild as I crossed the line. At the press conference I said, ‘This has proved I can win on any bike and the whingers can go and crawl back under their stones.’
Aaron Slight was sat next to me in silence!
We packed up and set off for home immediately as I wanted to get as far away as possible from the paddock back-stabbers. We drove as far as Luxembourg and parked up for the night at a nice motorway service station and enjoyed a few beers outside the motorhome on a nice warm evening. It was really good to be able to relax once more. And Danielle was talking to me again!
Back home, I received faxes from Davide Tardozzi, Virginio Ferrari and Garry Taylor, saying ‘Well done’. Even Scott Russell, who was struggling in GPs, rang me in the four-week gap before the next race to offer his congratulations.
Slick didn’t know how to feel. He was delighted for me, but in some ways he felt that it was his fault that I hadn’t won before. That wasn’t the case. It was simply that my own confidence, and that in the bike, had been restored. And I was sure that I could win at the next round at Monza.
Sure enough, I won the first race and should have won the second. I was quicker than the guys in front of me in the chicanes and had it all weighed up to pass Slight at the last corner until Chili came flying past and nearly T-boned me off the track to win it on the line. Slight’s bike was quicker and I made a mental note of that fact, but brushed it off as one of those things.
I had obviously convinced people that Hockenheim was no fluke, as Edwards approached me at the Monza paddock party to apologise. ‘I’ve said some things about you, but I was wrong,’ he began. ‘Let’s be mates. This is silly, especially as I’m good mates with Aaron and hanging round you guys all the time.’ So we made up there and then and have been okay with each other ever since.
The next round at Brno was always going to be a big test, at a circuit where I expected the bike to be a problem due to the large number of off-camber bends where I would struggle to lean over against the gradient of the track. The races also confirmed my belief that Slight’s bike was quicker. On a couple of the straights, especially an uphill section, I was struggling to even stay in his slipstream. Corser cleared off in both races but I managed to beat Aaron in the first before panicking in the second, when I saw some oil coming from a broken seal of Corser’s bike. Slight took advantage to push me into third. I was blazing mad and started to shout my mouth off in the press conference. ‘Perhaps, if I was given the same bike as my team-mate, I might have won those races,’ I fumed.
Neil was told in no uncertain terms that I was not happy with the situation. ‘Honestly, Carl, both engines are the same,’ he insisted. And I believed him, but that didn’t solve the problem. Even the fans had noticed on television and a couple of letters in MCN asked why Honda weren’t prepared to give me the same bike as Slight. It might seem as though it was just another case of me moaning or complaining all the time. But the facts were there. His bike was pulling away on the straights. Did I not have a right to ask what was going on? Many people don’t say a thing and just get on with it. But, when I’m mad about something, I want action and so I say what’s on my mind.
At Laguna Seca, where I have never gone that well, it was not really possible to tell whose bike was the quicker. I was eighth and fourth, but Slight just beat me in both races. Then we had to travel to Japan for the Suzuka 8 hours, which I hated and was absolutely dreading. But, being in Honda’s number one team with local rider, Takuma Aoki, we were favourites and expectations were high in the biggest race of the year for the Japanese.
In hideously hot conditions, we were leading because Aoki was riding really well. But Yamaha were closing in on our lead with a couple of laps left in one of my stints. I wanted to hand over to Aoki with the lead intact and was pushing extra hard. Then, more through exhaustion than anything else, I fell off at the hairpin and we dropped down to third or fourth before I could remount and hand over.
As soon as I got off the bike my leathers were ripped off by a couple of Japanese girls. It sounds kinky but, believe me, it wasn’t. Then I was dragged to a deep tub filled with icy cold water at the back of the garage, where I had to sit and return my body temperature back to normal. But I had been taking so much water on board before my stint that I was dying for a piss. I couldn’t be bothered getting out and going to the bogs. So I let it all out in the tub. After I had finished it was the turn of another Japanese rider, Tadayuki Okada, to si
t in the tub while I was led away to have a glucose drip inserted in my arm. He had no idea what I had left in there and was quite happily washing his face in the tub’s water. Nobody could understand why I was pissing myself laughing all the way through my massage in another air-conditioned unit!
All this time I was being fed energy food, as well as breathing in oxygen through a mask. By the time everyone had finished getting me ready to ride I was in a daze. It’s no wonder they call it an endurance race. We finished in third, which was not a bad result, although Aoki was a bit annoyed with me for crashing. Still, the race meant absolutely nothing to me.
Back home, there were only a few days before the next world championship round at Brands and I was still knackered from Suzuka. A crowd of 70,000 had turned up – but only to witness the same problems that had dogged me all year. One picture that was taken shows me in a kind of speedway pose, fighting to stop the rear end of the bike coming right round on me. Still, I managed to come fifth in the first race although I knew that I could have won on a Ducati.
Again I was fuming with the bike and pushed even harder in the second race. Fourth place was in the bag with five laps remaining and I settled for that. Then, for some reason, I tried to take a corner in first gear instead of second. I didn’t change positively enough, hit neutral and shot off the track. I put the loss of concentration down to fatigue from the Japan trip. In front of so many expectant fans it was a disaster and a crucial loss of points because Corser was now 48 points in front while I trailed Slight by 41.
Second and third places at Sentul were more promising but hid the story of a huge cock-up on my part. You could never really change gearboxes on a Ducati like you could with a Honda. Up to that meeting, we hadn’t bothered but, after qualifying, I felt that the gap between second and fourth gears was too long. When we tinkered with it, though, I made third gear way too short, especially for two particular corners.
I felt a right idiot and kept it very quiet because I was catching Kocinski everywhere in the first race, except for those two corners. In the second race, I was third behind Chili when his throttle stuck open and he ran off. Exactly the same thing happened to my bike one lap later. It was probably the shit and dust on the track. I ran wide but managed to save it, although I lost my concentration and Slight sneaked into second. Even after that incident I had another massive heart-stopping moment when the throttle stuck open again, leaving the fast right-hand first corner. This time I hit the rumble strips after shooting wide and, at every corner from then on, I banged on the throttle to make sure it wasn’t going to stick again.
The mishaps continued in Japan. I lost the front end during qualifying, slid into the foam banking and became tangled in some rope. The television cameras caught me kicking out at this stuff in an attempt to wriggle free as, not surprisingly, I wasn’t in the best of moods. I had bruised a rib, or so I thought, but felt fit enough to race on the Sunday and finished eighth and fourth.
It was around this point of the season that I realised that I had missed Ducati all along. Being with Honda was too much like being back at school. Everything had to be punctual and run like clockwork. Who cared if I wasn’t wearing the right shirt? Okay, Ducati were a bit disorganised at times, but in some ways I had missed that laid back Italian nature. I had found that the grass is not always greener on the other side.
But the memories of 1995 were still fresh. The Ducati was my bike. It worked to my strengths. And I think Ducati, and Virginio Ferrari in particular, were also missing me. He had fallen out with Kocinski and the two of them were not even speaking. I’m not surprised because Kocinski is a bit weird. Everything in the garage, like his food and towels, had to be laid out in perfect order. And, if anything had been touched, he would completely freak out. He had a phobia about dirtiness and was forever cleaning his leathers, helmet, boots – even his car keys. And, for some reason, he would not let people enter his motorhome. He blamed the team whenever he had a bad result and Virginio had had enough.
Ducati’s other factory rider was Neil Hodgson, who lived just a few miles down the road from Blackburn in Burnley. It was amazing that two riders from such a small area of Lancashire were both riding in the World Superbike championship in the same season. He did really well to get a two-year deal, as all he’d ever really done was to qualify on the front row of a Grand Prix grid in Argentina, during his season in GPs the previous year with a private Yamaha team. He was capable of the odd fast lap but I think his manager, Roger Burnett, must have done a particularly good job in getting Ducati to take a gamble on him. I think he was a little bit out of his depth but I got on very well with him and, as the season wore on, I found that I was spending more and more time with the Ducati lads.
Virginio had already tentatively approached me halfway through the season, asking if I would think about a return for 1997. And he was desperate for an answer by the time we left Sugo. He didn’t know that Neil Tuxworth had also asked to open negotiations after the round in Indonesia. But it wasn’t a decision that I wanted to be rushed into. Whatever I decided for 1997, whether I stayed at Honda or returned to Ducati, it was probably going to be where I would end my career. That said, it was obvious where my heart was.
During that weekend in Japan, Virginio made his first official approach. ‘I don’t want a repeat of last year,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to ride for me, tell me now so that I can look for a new rider. You tell me how much money you want.’ I gave him my demands there and then, which was a lot more than Ducati had ever paid me before.
Virginio was straight on the phone to Italy and he cornered me in the track’s hotel toilet after the races. ‘Carl, I need you to sign this, now,’ he urged, thrusting a piece of paper in my direction. It was just a normal sheet of A4, which contained the most basic of hand-written contracts:
I, Carl Fogarty, agree to ride for Ducati in 1997 for ‘x’ amount of pounds.
That was all it said. Virginio added, ‘I have all these other riders like Slight and Gobert who want to ride for me, but they cannot ride a Ducati like you can.’ He then pulled out a proposal from Aaron Slight to Ducati. The money he was demanding was something like $800,000. That was about the same as me and I had already won two world titles on a Ducati. ‘Sign for me now, Carl,’ he pleaded. Although legally the document probably meant nothing, we both knew that neither of us would go back on our word.
I signed his piece of paper and Virginio ripped up Slight’s proposal in front of me and threw it in the toilet bin! It had not even reached the bosses at Ducati.
It wasn’t until I broke the news to Neil Tuxworth, on the way back from Japan, that I realised how badly Honda wanted me for another year. I had expected them to shrug it off because I had never felt that I was wanted. But Neil was absolutely devastated, and not just because we had worked well on a personal basis during the year. ‘We have a new bike that will work better for you. The swinging arm would suit you more,’ he said.
It also seemed clear that they wanted me a lot more than they wanted Slight. They even sent one of their main men, Mr Yoshishige Nomura, over to talk to me at the next round at Assen to try and persuade me to change my mind. It was too late. But, if Honda had shown that commitment to me during the season, it might have been a different story.
The Ducati agreement meant that I could concentrate on the rest of the season without the usual contract hassles. Fortunately, none of the other riders had stolen much of an advantage in Japan and, if I could manage a couple of wins at Assen, which was just about my favourite track, the title was still within reach.
First, though, Honda wanted me to put a stop to all the rumours surrounding my future. A press conference was called where I announced the Ducati deal and said, ‘Now will people leave me alone and let me concentrate on winning the championship for Honda.’
The bruised rib was still causing me pain so I asked the track doctors in Holland to look at it again, as I was sure that it felt broken. Their diagnosis was the same – the rib wa
s bruised and nothing else. During qualifying, the pain became intolerable so I insisted on an X-ray. Surprise, surprise, it was broken in two places. I went barmy. ‘For the last two weeks I’ve tried to carry on as normal because you lot told me it wasn’t broken,’ I ranted. Injections took away most of the pain – in fact injections are all they seem to give you at the clinic, even for a cold.
Kocinski was faster than I was in one section, where I struggled to pull the bike over from the right and into the last left-hand corner. Having won the first race, I had a great battle with Kocinski in the second. He out-braked me entering the final chicane but ran wide. So I stuck it back up the inside of him, hooked it into first gear and beat him and Troy Corser over the line. It was the first time any Honda rider had won both races at a single round and the points difference between me and Slight, the championship leader, was now just 22 with two rounds remaining.
I have always attracted a large British following to Assen because it’s only a short ferry ride over the Channel, and the Dutch town turned into one big English party. I had also decided to take the ferry home from Rotterdam to Hull on the Monday night and enjoy a few drinks with everyone else who was travelling back to England. I felt really rough anyway, because we’d had a skinful after I did the double. But the shooting pains in my chest were now unbearable. I went to lie down in the cabin that I was sharing with Neil Hodgson. After half an hour I was writhing in agony, dripping in sweat and suffering spasms. The weekend’s painkillers had obviously worn off.
Luckily, Neil came back with a girl, who worked as one of the chefs for Honda. He’d obviously had a few drinks but was sober enough to notice that I wasn’t feeling too bright. ‘I’m in agony with this rib thing. Go and find the captain and get me some painkillers,’ I pleaded. He went off with the girl and came back with some aspirin, or something similar. I don’t know whether he expected the pills to send me straight to sleep, but he went full steam ahead with his attempts to get the girl into his bunk. At least his drunken fumblings took my mind off my rib for a few minutes – until she decided she’d seen enough and left us to lick our respective wounds.