PAUL FOWLER DUCATI

TRAINING INSTRUCTOR

“Each of the 14 Ducati dealerships across the country has a riding school like ours attached to it, and we happen to be the one for Coventry. So if someone wants to learn to ride with a look to buying a Ducati, we do the training on their behalf, exactly like we did with Chaz. The dealerships are strategically spread across the UK, and Ducati can put you in touch with the dealerships, or you can go into a dealership, which has a training school attached. They supply the customers and we supply the training – and that’s all levels, from a complete beginner to advanced work after passing. “I try and teach everyone at a level they want to work at, and Chaz can obviously ride a bike! What I had to do was channel that into a way he could pass his test. It’s not as easy as it sounds – the biggest number of failures we get at a test is that folk don’t apply the highway code. You’re not going to pass running a red light on test, and people have done this, trust me! It’s trying to get the person at the peak of their performance on their test day. Chaz is a lovely bloke who rides beautifully on the road, though was very restrained. I realised that was going to be a problem to overcome, and it was, as he got some minors for going too slow. I had to take a very pragmatic view and ask if it was going to be a failure or hiccup, and it was hiccup. At the test we didn’t tell the DSA who was coming, they had no idea, and when we told the examiner he’d just given a WSB race winner minors for going too slow, I don’t know who was more embarrassed, him or Chaz! “The little Monster 696s we use are great little things too, we use them as our standard fleet bike. Everyone who has ridden one has gotten off with a big grin on their face, like Chaz, which is exactly what we want!”