Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  And the reaction to my results was horrendous. When the crowd invaded the track one guy, who I assumed was English, gave me the wanker sign and another shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘What’s up with you?’ Nobody had any idea the pain I was in. Everyone was quick to jump down my throat and the other riders loved it, especially when the press back home had their little digs. Apparently, it was disgraceful for a factory rider to finish so low down. If it had been any other rider, there wouldn’t have been a mention. But with me, the expectations are higher.

  My back was still hurting for the next round in Italy, so Davide tried to rebuild my battered confidence. ‘We just need some consistency. You might be sixth in the championship, but you are not many points behind,’ he pointed out. Luckily, the other riders were also still struggling for form and the leader, Corser, hadn’t even won a race. A third and fourth place in Misano was not spectacular, but did help to bring back a bit more of that much-needed consistency.

  Davide clearly still had faith in me because, during the Misano round, he approached me about an early deal for the following year.

  ‘Look Davide. I think I’m going to quit,’ I confessed. ‘Unless I start feeling better and start winning regularly again, I’m going to stop at the end of this year.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll talk again after Laguna,’ he replied.

  The next round at Kyalami, in South Africa, another new venue, did little to improve my mood. The results were good, a couple of second places behind Chili. But it was now clear that the two Ducati teams weren’t going to be able to work together. The first day of practice was riddled with problems. We expected to go slower in the altitude – but not ninth fastest. I was assured that there had been an oversight with the engine and that everything would be okay on the Saturday. But when I sent Slick round to find out what tyres Corser and Chili had been using, he reported back that they wouldn’t give us any information.

  There’s always been some friction between Virginio and Davide. Virginio has always seen him as a rival to be Ducati’s main man. But this was taking it too far. I was blazing mad and spat my dummy out of the pram. ‘Right, we’re not telling them a fucking thing from now on,’ I fumed. Ironically, Chili saved his tyres better in the first race, although I was right up there with him. It was a similar story in the second. But, on the last lap, at the one point of the circuit where I knew I could take him, the low sun made a pass too risky because I couldn’t see where I was going properly.

  After racing most of the riders ended up in a restaurant called Montego Bay, where a 10-course meal cost around a fiver, due to the weakness of the South African currency. Jamie was back on the scene, riding a Suzuki, which meant that the night was always likely to be lively. Then Corser bought everyone a round of shots, and I don’t normally drink shorts. That became the theme for the night and just about everyone was sick. Michaela spewed in our room and Jamie and Andrea were up all night honking their guts up. I didn’t sleep well and, the following morning, all I wanted to do was sit round the pool before our evening flight.

  Everyone else must have still been pissed because they decided to go on a tour of the area, organised by the Ducati importers based in Johannesburg. The roads to the local lion park were the most hideously bumpy I’ve ever been on. So, by the time we arrived there, I was desperate to be sick.

  The security – or lack of it – at this place was unbelievable. In England, we would have electric fences and automatic gates for the cars. In South Africa, there was a guy with a stick, ready to shoo the lions back into the park! I could hardly stop the car and get out so I ended up sticking my head out of the window and spewing for England. Inside the car there were hysterics, outside the lions looked at me as if to say, ‘What’s this idiot doing here?’

  We moved on from there to a rhino park, where I was sick again. In fact, it wasn’t until I woke up in London after the flight home that I could keep any food down.

  There was no time to return to Blackburn as the next round in California was the following week. We decided to spend a night in San Francisco and visited Alcatraz, where me and Jamie had our pictures taken behind bars. Michaela and Andrea thought it would have been a good idea to leave us there. They might as well have done for all the success I had at Laguna. I had a nightmare in qualifying and thought to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I can’t even be bothered winning.’ I had no motivation at all and, although I wasn’t even interested about getting the best out of the bike, complained to Davide. But he knew I was behaving like a spoilt child and told me so.

  ‘You are wasting my time and the mechanics’ time,’ he shouted. ‘It’s not the fucking bike, it’s you. If you want to win, you will win. You know that you can win, but only you can sort yourself out.’

  It was the first time anyone had spoken to me like that in racing. My dad might have said the odd thing in the past, but he was entitled to because he was my dad. It did the trick and pumped me up. From that moment on, we were far more consistent for the rest of the year.

  I had come second in both races at Laguna in 1997 so I told the mechanics to set up the bike exactly as it had been the previous year. In the Sunday morning warm-up, I was a gnat’s cock off the fastest time. The only problem now was to move up from the third row of the grid on one of the tightest tracks in the world, where it was notoriously difficult to pass. I managed to work my way up to fourth place, behind Corser and two Kawasakis ridden by Akira Yanagawa and Doug Chandler. There would have been no problem passing those two, until Chandler’s bar snapped and he ran into Yanagawa at The Corkscrew, a twisty section with a steep downhill slope.

  When I arrived it was like a scene from the Tom Cruise film, Days of Thunder, set at Daytona, where he drives into some fog. I couldn’t see a thing for the dust and the debris, and just missed someone’s wheel on the inside. Another rider crashed behind me but, suddenly, there was daylight again and I was in second place. But by the start of the next lap the red flags were out and the race was stopped.

  For the restart I was on the second row of the grid, having been in fifth at the start of the lap before the crash. But it was obviously going to be one of those days for crashes. When it eventually got under way, a rider from the third row came through and clipped Aaron Slight, causing another big pile-up. Slight’s ankle was badly injured and Piergiorgio Bontempi broke his arm. The organisers decided to scrap the first race and award half points. There was more bad luck in the second race. Having again reached third behind Corser and Haga from a third row start, my bike cut out and I was hit by Jamie Whitham. He stayed on his bike while I wobbled back to the pits and retired.

  But the weekend had taught me a lot for the rest of the year. I left America 33 points behind Corser, with four rounds remaining. I would have to pull my finger out at Brands, Austria and Assen if I was to have a chance of the title. Davide’s words were still ringing in my ears and I was determined not to make any more mistakes with the set-up. The only problem was that because the championship was so open, four or five other riders were thinking exactly the same thing.

  To some extent, I was robbed of the chance to set the bike up perfectly at Brands through the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen in Britain, from Saturday night until the early hours of race day. The garages were flooded and the rain left a covering of sandy dirt on the track. It meant that all the hard work we had put into tyre choice during practice went out the window. I rode well to finish fourth but there was no way I could challenge the first three, the two Hondas and Scott Russell, who had all chosen the same tyre – a different one to the Ducatis. We obviously followed their example for the second race and it made a big difference. But, by the time I made it into second place, Corser had a three-second lead. My attempt to pull that back was probably my best piece of riding of the whole year.

  The problem that had caused me to lose points at Donington, Monza and Kyalami had returned. The rear wheel was chattering and coming round on me, but only at certain corners. It was horrendous
at Brands and I had to ride round the problem to stand any chance of catching Corser. So, just as I tipped the bike into the corners, I opened the gas in an attempt to keep the back wheel down on the Tarmac and limit the chattering.

  Jamie was behind me in third and could see exactly what I was doing for the best part of 22 laps out of the 25. It was not enough to win, but the massive 82,000 crowd really appreciated the effort. They loved it even more when I promised to be back the following year because it was the first time, in a trackside interview over the public address, that I had publicly stated that I wouldn’t be retiring. I had never said that I wouldn’t be racing. But I hadn’t said that I would be and the press built up that uncertainty and speculated that it would be my last race there.

  My adrenaline was flowing and I celebrated like I had won. First my helmet came off, hurled into row Z of the grandstand. Then I threw my gloves and boots into the stands and was left wandering around in my white socks, which stood out a mile.

  Later that evening I was wearing even less. Every year the track’s Thistle Hotel stages a charity bash which most of the riders attend. I wasn’t really up for it and was having a few quiet drinks at the bar when the announcer shouted, ‘Come on, Foggy, come and join us.’ Jamie Whitham, Scott Russell, Aaron Slight, Colin Edwards and Troy Corser had already been dragged up onto the stage. None of us knew what was happening, until one of the organisers threw us some hats and the Full Monty music started. The others were happy to strip down to their strides and flash their backsides. But me and Jamie went the whole hog and threw the hats away as well in full view of the audience, before turning round quickly and putting our underpants back on. We weren’t the only ones flashing as cameras had started clicking all round the room. I thought, ‘Oh no! Where are these photos going to appear tomorrow?’

  It wasn’t until everything had died down the next day that I started to feel a bit angry about the races. I had done enough to win them both, only to be let down by inconsistency with the bike or tyres yet again. It sounds like more excuses but, up to this point, there had only been two races where the bike had been spot on and when I didn’t have other problems like injuries. Those were my two wins in Australia and Albacete. But Davide said, ‘You can still win this thing, you know. Corser might have some bad luck and there are a lot of guys around who are capable of beating him.’

  Not everyone shared Davide’s confidence that I could pull back the 30 points on Corser over three rounds. But I had kept my self-belief and the next two rounds were the key. I needed to beat Corser in both Austrian races, as well as the two at Assen.

  To add to the tension within the Ducati camp, there were no clear signals about what was going to happen for the following year. Davide thought he would be running the team and wanted me and Corser as his riders. But even he wasn’t sure what was going on. All three riders were in the dark and Virginio also wanted to know where he stood. Ducati were trying to delay the decision until after the Assen round. I couldn’t wait that long so I spoke to Claudio Domenicali at the A1 Ring. He was hardly reassuring. ‘If you have another offer from another team, all I can say is take it,’ he began. ‘We are not sure what will happen next year. You have not had a brilliant year, Corser has not been fast and Chili has been inconsistent.’

  Bloody hell, talk about telling you straight.

  For the first time I realised that there was no loyalty in racing. The Battas had approached me again to join the Alstare Suzuki team and, although I didn’t want to leave Ducati, it was tempting to play them off against each other. There have been times when I have planted stories in the motorcycle press, probably more than other riders. I don’t know whether it worked, but it couldn’t have done me a lot of harm to have Ducati wondering if Suzuki had made me a bigger offer! I’ve never been dishonest, but answering press questions with a cryptic smile can be just as effective.

  Corser was also claiming that the whole situation was distracting him, although Chili didn’t seem too bothered. Maybe, being Italian, he knew that he would be looked after. And the Austrian races gave us even more reason to believe that he was getting preferential treatment. Chili’s bike was miles quicker than our bikes and, in the first race, he passed me at the second last corner to claim second place behind Slight. But, while my tyres were destroyed, his were like new.

  In the second race, after I had altered the suspension, Slight got by on the last lap to leave me in second. I had closed the gap from 34 points to 19, but the other two contenders, Slight and Chili, had also made ground on Corser, who was blazing mad that his bike was also so much slower than Chili’s. I sympathised with him. I didn’t trust Virginio and I didn’t trust Franco Farne, Chili’s engine guy – who also worked in the factory. My suspicion was that he always provided Chili with the best engine.

  The in-fighting at Ducati seemed heaven sent for Slight, who could keep chipping away while we took points off each other. And I knew that, if I didn’t win at Assen, I wouldn’t win the title. Sure enough I led the first race but couldn’t shake Chili off my back. On the last lap he pulled out of my slipstream, almost before we got onto the straight. It was all too easy for him. But I felt as though I could get him back until I made a mistake at The Kinks, before the final chicane, and lost the tow. Again my tyre was destroyed and Chili’s was like new. I was furious. On the podium Chili was trying to say, ‘Don’t be like that, someone has got to win.’ I felt like telling him to ‘Fuck off’.

  At the press conference I said, ‘I have to go out in front because no one else knows how to lead a race around this track, so everyone follows me.’ I was annoyed that I had done all the hard work only for Chili to breeze past.

  By the time the second race started, I was still burning mad under my helmet. The red mist was down again. ‘There is no way that I am going to lose this race,’ I said to myself. ‘And I have to get someone between me and Corser.’ It was the same story in the second race when me and Chili cleared off in front. I had to stop a repeat performance of the first race because his bike was definitely quicker. So this time, as soon as we came out of The Kinks on the final lap, I shot over to the left-hand side to stop him getting anywhere near my slipstream. At the next left corner he was coming up on the outside but I just let my bike run wide, pushing him right out, and we almost collided. He had no choice but to back off. I had to brake hard to make the next tight right-hander but, because he had eased off, he was not there on the inside, as expected. I was into the straight first.

  ‘Yes, this is mine,’ I thought, as I glanced back to check where he was. In fact, I was so concerned about where Chili was that I lost it in the final two corners. At one point I was in second gear, instead of my usual third, and riding erratically in a desperate bid to keep him behind. Chili seized his chance, came past me again but I was confident I could beat him on the brakes when we entered the final chicane. In fact, I was so late on the brakes that my back end was squirming round. And I even banged it into first to slow the bike right up so that I could get into the chicane first. Chili tried to come back on the outside but, having let go of the brakes, he put them on again and lost the front end. I had no idea that he had crashed, flicked my bike to the left, banged it into second gear and the race was mine.

  When I looked back, punching and kicking the air, I couldn’t see him. He must have been so pissed off at coming second that he shut off his engine immediately, I thought. The 20,000 Brits that had come across on the ferry went mental and invaded the track. I grabbed an English flag to carry round.

  It had to be English because I wasn’t riding for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. I have nothing against those countries but I’m an Englishman and it annoys me that more English sportsmen don’t insist on carrying the Cross of St George instead of the Union Jack. Okay, Michaela wore a Union Jack dress at Brands Hatch the previous year, but that was only because we couldn’t find one with the English flag design. We even thought about having one made specially. But, because Geri Halliwell had made them pop
ular, it was easier to get your hands on the one she wore. It really caught on and even the blokes were wearing them at Assen!

  As I entered the pit lane, I could see Chili marching towards me, pointing angrily. It was only then that I realised he must have crashed. I had barely come to a stop when he threw a punch at me, which glanced off my visor. ‘What the fuck are you doing? I just passed you on the inside,’ I yelled at him as everyone rushed over to pull him away. He was pointing in the direction of the corner at which I forced him to run wide.

  As far as I’m concerned, it was nothing to do with that incident. The stupid idiot fell off at the last corner and blew his world championship hopes. He needed to blame somebody else. What did he expect, anyway? On the last lap of any race, you always weave about to stop someone coming past. But he wouldn’t leave it alone and all hell was breaking loose, so I decided to wind him up even more by filling the pit lane with smoke from a burn-out and giving him the finger. Davide grabbed me before I lost control and told me to walk away. ‘This is what we want to happen,’ he said. ‘It is looking bad on him and good on us if we ignore him.’ When someone told me that I was now only six points behind Corser and five and a half behind Slight, I was even more pumped up.

  Things had only just started to calm down by the time of the press conference. Slight had already come up to me and asked, ‘What’s Chili’s problem? It was a clean move.’ But Virginio had encouraged Chili to stir it all up again.

  Chili turned up, halfway through the conference, wearing a tatty blue dressing gown and looking like he had just been dragged through a hedge backwards. It was a long way from the classic stylish Italian look. He sat on the front row and was staring daggers while I told everyone, ‘Yes, I just passed him on the inside – a nice clean move to win the race.’

  The interviewer then asked, ‘Any more questions, ladies and gentlemen?’ at which point Chili stood up and said, ‘Yes, I have something to say. I would just like to say that what this man, Carl Fogarty, has done here today was a disgrace.’ I had heard enough. I stood up and started to walk out, saying, ‘Sorry, guys. I’m not staying to listen to this shit.’ I had to walk past him to leave the tent and it all kicked off again with people piling in from all angles to separate us. It was all handbags at 30 paces but I was still blazing mad.