by Guy Martin
Wherever I’ve been and whatever I’ve been doing, when I get back to the truck yard it’s always the same: there will be a note on a toolbox telling me what to do. The first time I speak to Moody, all we’ll talk about is what needs doing. He won’t ask where I’ve been or what I’ve been up to for a couple of days. And I like that. More than that, I need it. Moody doesn’t believe the hype, and neither should you.
STOP PRESS
The week before the hardback edition went to the printers I was out in Bonneville again with Matt Markstaller and the Triumph streamliner at Mike Cook’s Land Speed Shootout. We were hoping to get closer to the record than we had in my first time in it, but the week started off badly with a couple of days of rain. The salt dried out, but it left it very soft and bumpy and not good enough for top-speed record runs. Cars were running and causing big ruts in the track, making the salt look and feel like slushy snow, but I still wanted to get in the thing and build up my experience.
There were a few hold-ups with the streamliner. The FIM tech inspectors picked up on some stuff which held us up. When I asked if my first ride back in the thing could be with the training wheels bolted to the side, Matt told me I didn’t need them. I got there on Monday and the first run was Friday afternoon. We set off being towed to the end and in less than two miles I got cross-rutted, couldn’t keep it up and the streamliner went down on its side. It only caused cosmetic damage, but we lost a day checking it over. I was out in it the next morning again, but this time it wasn’t running right and took another day to sort out.
I’m not patient when I’m waiting for parts at Moody’s, but out there you have no choice but to be patient, so I wasn’t getting frustrated. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, it was just taking a bit longer to clean them up than anyone wanted.
I had one more run before we were set to go home. I accelerated away fine, but got caught in another rut, lost control and barrel-rolled the streamliner. I was alright, no bother, but the streamliner had some damage this time, the swingarm got bent, so it was game over.
We learned summat though: if the salt’s not perfect, there’s not a lot of point in being there, but I want to keep coming back. There is only a certain selection of people who are doing streamliner land speed records: Chris Carr, Rocky Robinson, Valerie Thompson. Who else has the knack? It’s a very small bunch of people and I want to be one of them. I want people to think, Get in touch with him, he’s not a messer.
NEVER SAY NEVER
After reading the book this far you’ll be sure, like I was, that I was done with the TT and road racing for the big teams. If I was going back, it would be on something oddball – the Martek, a 500 two-stroke, a MotoGP, something like that. I’d made my mind up. I’d seen the bigger picture. I’d done the Tour Divide when the 2016 TT was on and hadn’t missed it at all. Then Neil Tuxworth got in touch …
Tuxworth is the boss of Honda Racing in Britain and he first contacted me in October 2016, just as the hardback of this book was coming out. He rang my dad for my number. They used to race against each other. My dad doesn’t hand my phone number out to anyone, but he broke the rule this time. Tuxworth asked if he could come and see me. As soon as he said it I thought, I’m not riding for Honda, but if he wants to come round for a natter … So I said, ‘Get yourself round.’
I like the bloke, he’s interesting. He raced the TT himself and was a podium man in the mid-seventies, in the F2 and Lightweight 125cc class, and raced the TT right up until 1989. He won the Classic Manx GP too, but more impressive to me is that he used to run ultramarathons. He’s paying for it now, though, with knee-replacement therapy. To most people, he’s much better known as a team manager. Tuxworth has managed teams that have won championships in World Superbike and British Superbike and he’s run the endurance side of things and Honda’s successful TT team for years. He’s had Colin Edwards, Fogarty, McGuinness, Dunlop, Ryuichi Kiyonari, Alex Lowes and tons of riders racing for him.
He came round for his tea and made it clear that he wanted me to race for Honda. I told him if he could get me Márquez’s bike, I’d be there like a shot. He said he’d ask the question. He came back to me not long after and said that we couldn’t use Márquez’s bike because it’s not a road bike, it’s not what he did, but that this is what he could offer: minimum PR stuff – three press days; this bike; this team; these tyres; use of a car; a Ten Kate 600 Supersport to race if I wanted it; the chance to race the Mugen electric bike; and a wage.
I asked him to give me a week to think about it. I was going to China for the TV job at the end of that week and gave myself until then to have a good think about it. All that week I couldn’t talk myself into it and I couldn’t talk myself out of it. It wasn’t until I was in the check-in queue at Heathrow that I called Tuxworth to say, ‘Ta very much, but I’m umming and ahing too much, so it’s not for me.’
I went to China for three weeks and didn’t give it another thought. It was the right decision. I was still excited about motorbikes. I was still getting my Martek ready to race at the Burt Munro Classic in New Zealand at the back end of the year, I’d been regularly dirt tracking on my little Honda 100 and I’d been out to the Nürburgring on a Triumph Daytona 675R to do a few laps, but it was all just fun stuff, nowt serious.
After I got back from China I went to a night do at Cadwell organised by Peter Boast, an old mate who has been racing for years and got the whole dirt-track thing going in Britain. He’d organised an event where racers from the 1970s were talking about the old days. Tuxworth was there, too. We said hello and he told me, ‘The bikes are still there if you want them.’ I said, ‘No, you’re alright, but you’re welcome to come round for tea if you want, next Friday.’ I liked him coming round. I liked that he was chasing me, even though my mind was made up, because normally it’s racers chasing him for a job and this was the other way round.
Between the do at Cadwell and Tuxworth coming round I had a week to think about the offer that was still on the table. Then, when I was biking home from Grimsby on the Wednesday, I thought, Hang on, I’m going to do it. It might kill us, but fuck it.
When I got home, I walked into the kitchen and said, ‘You know what, Shazza? I’m going to do it.’ She said, ‘Do what?’ I told her I was going back to racing. Sharon would rather I didn’t do it, but she’ll support me either way.
Tuxworth came round two days later and as he walked through the door I said, ‘Alright, how are we doing it?’ He was prepared, he already had a new deal to offer, this time changing minimal PR to no press days. All I had to do was a thing at their Louth workshop one Monday morning in the new year and that would be it.
I know, I’d completely contradicted myself. All the way through this book I’d written what I was thinking at the time, that there was no way I was going back. I’d done the Tour Divide, the best thing I’d ever done in my life, while all those boys were back at the TT doing exactly what they’d done for years. But bugger it, I’m allowed to change my mind. It’s the best team, and what sound like they could be the best tyres. And like I always say, never say never.
I waited for the contract to come and crossed some of it out and sent it back. That was it. I would be racing for Honda’s official team. In the past, when it came to our mindsets and attitudes it seemed like Honda were at one end of the scale and I was at the other, but they’ve ended up chasing me. I never saw that coming. I’m excited about it. I like the people, but I’m not kidding myself about the reasons they’ve come to me.
The first bit of business as a Honda rider was the launch at their Louth headquarters. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was surprised when I turned up and there were four or five folk from Motorcycle News there. I didn’t know about that and I’m not much of an MCN fan. I took Mick Moody with me; he is my boss after all. He’d been telling me I should join Honda and go back to the TT because it’s unfinished business, but I don’t think it is. I’m quite happy with what I’ve done. I just miss racing. I’m al
lowed to, aren’t I?
People told me that some of the MCN coverage sounded like I was only doing it for the money, where before I’d always said I raced as a hobby. Taking money from Honda rights it all in my head. All those other times, whether it was conscious or subconscious, I’d think, Well, the results don’t matter because it’s only my hobby. I’m not getting paid or owt. If I didn’t win, I’d say to myself, It doesn’t matter, because I’ve got a proper job, these lot haven’t. Where are you going? Off to polish your motorhome? I realise now it was Brian, my inner chimp, making excuses for a lack of performance.
I don’t worry that I look hypocritical by choosing to go back when I’ve said that I thought riders like Ryan Farquhar shouldn’t have allowed themselves to be pulled back in after they’ve retired. The way I’ve written When You Dead, You Dead and Worms to Catch is in the heat of the moment, writing each chapter as soon as possible after what I’m describing has happened. So each sentence is how I felt at the time, without hindsight or time for reflecting on the job. I still believe, writing this before I’ve been out on the Honda, that whatever 2017 brings, nothing will beat the Tour Divide as an experience and what I got out of it. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I need to try to find something else that can beat that and all I can think of is cycling to Magadan on the far side of Russia. Road racing isn’t it. What I’ve also realised is it doesn’t have to be either/or, either motorbikes or pushbikes, it can be both. Not at the same time, but in the same lifetime. Getting a chance to ride for the factory Honda team might not be offered to me next year and I’d regret it if I didn’t take it. I’m 35, I’m probably getting a bit old for motorbike racing. Well, maybe not yet, but I’m getting that way. I can still do these daft pushbike races when I’m 50.
John McGuinness has stayed with Honda. This will be his twelfth season with the official team and he’ll be 45 this year. Tuxworth said that McGuinness had told him he wasn’t bothered who his new teammate was, he still had to beat him, but I was a bit surprised to hear from McGuinness that he’d only found out I was his new teammate ten minutes before arriving at Louth for the press conference. He admitted it was a massive shock.
McGuinness has still got it, course he has. He won the Senior and broke the lap record in 2015, the last time I raced there. In 2016, Dunlop won both the big races – the Superbike and the Senior.
Tuxworth says all the right things. Even though I missed the fastest year of the TT, 2016, I’m still the fifth-fastest man around there. In 2016, the Isle of Man had two weeks of great weather, so everyone had loads of time on the bikes and wasn’t disrupted by practice sessions being cancelled, so top speeds went up. But I didn’t want to be there. I saw the results when I was at the top of Togwotee Pass, Wyoming, part way through the Tour Divide, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
We were talking at Louth and I knew I’d done over 130, but I didn’t know I’d done a 132 mph average lap of the TT. I can’t remember all that and I don’t give a shit. It doesn’t make me more of a man, that I’ve done this or that lap time.
I don’t have to do any more press stuff if I don’t want, but I do have to do the podium stuff. I’m not being a knob, but I don’t want to do all that. I can see the benefits of doing a podium and the press conference after, because it’s giving back to the team, but I don’t really want to be asked the same shit questions again that I’ve been asked for the last ten years, so if I had a choice I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I won’t get on the podium, so I won’t have to worry about it.
I’ve gone to the TT before with what I called a no-stone-unturned attitude, where I’ve had the bikes right, got the team right, got the fitness right, but I realise now I’d not got my head right. I’ve been at a race thinking I couldn’t be any better prepared. I’ve turned up at races knowing I’m not a full-time racer, but I couldn’t be any fitter. The missing component is I haven’t sorted my head. I didn’t know that at the time, but I do now. I need to refocus. My mind keeps wandering. Brian, my inner chimp, keeps taking control, grabbing hold of the joystick. And he’s irrational. He wants to win too, but his thought processes don’t make sense.
In the past, when I’ve been in winning positions at the TT, Brian has been putting thoughts in my head like: Imagine all the mithering you’re going to get if you win this. It doesn’t really matter, does it? We can go back to work and you’ll be alright, you’re good at that.
What I’ve got to do is have the ‘computer’ part of my brain rule the chimp. It’s all in Steve Peters’ book The Chimp Paradox. I need to switch the computer on. People deal with the concentration needed to do well in a two-hour race in different ways. I think I need to talk to myself. I need to say, Right Brian, this is what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing it and this is what’s going to happen at the end of it, and if you give me any bother while we’re doing it I’m going to put you back down and refocus. You have to appreciate why we’re doing this. It’s only two hours, so you’ve got to help me through this.
I couldn’t understand why I could do the Tour Divide, getting up at three in the morning after three or four hours’ rough sleeping and not hear the chimp part of my brain telling me to have another couple of hours’ kip – it’ll do you good.
By learning more about the way the brain works and the way Steve Peters has helped Olympic athletes to succeed has made me realise that I was in what he calls ‘computer mode’ when I was on the Tour Divide. I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing, I was just going through the routine that I’d learned in the first few days. Plus, when you’re knackered your inner chimp is less active. With Brian out of the picture, the computer mode works like an autopilot.
I’ve also realised that I had been putting far too much emphasis on the TT. I know I’ve just got to treat it like another motorbike race. It’s like Olympians thinking the final at London or Rio is anything different to what they’ve done hundreds of times before. It’s not, it’s just another race. If you get beaten, and you know that you tried your hardest and kept your focus, then that’s all you can do. And I’ve had races like that in the past, when I’ve done everything I could and still not won, but that’s the way it goes. I know I’ve looked at the TT the wrong way for 13 years, or however long it’s been. When I am turning up to another big race, the Ulster or whatever, and thinking of it as just another motorcycle race, I do alright.
I am enjoying thinking deeply about all these things. I thought I had good control over my chimp, especially when I was seeing other racers making mistakes in races, but I realised I wasn’t that bright and Brian might be brighter than most chimps. A lot of the time, the chimp has been running the job and I didn’t know. He had me fooled.
I’m considering all the mental aspects, which I haven’t before. I haven’t because I knew I had willpower, but I now know that willpower is nothing to do with it. It’s all to do with controlling Brian. That’s not willpower.
At Louth, McGuinness reminded me of a TT I was leading by nine seconds or summat and he beat me by … I can’t remember what now. As he’s telling me this I’m not sat wondering, If I had a bit more control over my brain then perhaps it would’ve been different. I never have. That was then and this is now. I don’t look back and think, If I’d have done that differently it might have been a different outcome. If your auntie had balls, she’d be your uncle. Everything happens for a reason.
An important thing about going back to the TT will be controlling the mither. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with attention. It gets too much for me sometimes and the chimp starts screaming – he can’t deal with rakes of people – but I’m going to have to sort that out. I can’t hide in the truck and I ca ’t, and don’t want to, tell journalists, TV folk or spectators to eff off. I told Tuxworth that ideally I’ll be in the pits before dinner, sussing the job out, talking to the lads about what we’re going to do that night in practice. I changed the way I did things when I was with TAS. I turned up at four o’clock and I was on the
bike at five o’clock and as soon as I got off the bike I was off, because I was getting mither from start to finish. Really, I want to be there four or five hours before, looking at the bikes, talking to the mechanics, because I might just realise, when I’m looking at the bike, that we could change that or try this. I don’t want to be barking orders at them, I just want to be there with them. Tuxworth told me we’ll have that sorted. How he’s going to do that, I don’t know.
Boastie worked with the Honda lot for a short while and it sounds like it wasn’t how he imagined it would be. I think it was too regimented for him, but when people’s lives are at stake I like the idea of the team being well drilled. I realise I’ve got to go into the Honda team and do what they do. I can’t take my mates and the mechanics I’ve worked with for years along with me. I used to want to be involved in everything, especially when I was with Shaun Muir’s Hydrex team. I changed that when I joined TAS Suzuki, but Danny Horne, who I’d worked with before, did come with me at the start.
I’ve blown out a load of the TV stuff. I’m doing a programme on the centennial anniversary of the making of the first tank, the British Mark I. The tank first saw service in the First World War, in September 1916 in the Somme, but it was more successful at battles in 1917. And I get to drive a Challenger. That’s the only TV on the horizon. North One came to me with a load of other interesting ideas, but I’m backing off for a while.
I am genuinely looking forward to getting out on the new Fireblade, seeing what I think of the tyres, finding out how I get on with the team. The new bike has the same frame, same swinging arm, same engine cases, but everything else is slightly different. It’s an evolution, which is not a bad thing. The original 2008 Blade wasn’t a bad bike. I’m not worried that I’m coming to the Fireblade after its best; no one makes a bad superbike any more, it’s just what you do with them and, as I’ve said, I’ve been thinking a lot about that side of things.