AT LUNCH WITH...
He was a talented racer – multiple GP wins proved that – but Chas also had an elevated capacity for partying...
Chas Mortimer. The ex-gp star is a fine raconteur with many racy tales
By the time our main course arrives, Chas Mortimer is telling a story that contains all the elements of his dazzling racing career and an equally sparkling zest for life. There’s speed, bravery, cunning and a devil-may-care glint in his eye that got him into all manner of scrapes, often involving beautiful women.
“I did the Czech GP in 1978 and then flew back to do the Vladivar Vodka 250 race at Oulton Park,” he says, his public school accent seeming slightly out of place coming from a hard-as-nails 1970s GP racer. “I qualified on pole, got a good start and then a tw*t tried to go up the inside and knocked me off at the first corner. I got run over and broke my leg really badly – the surgeons in Crewe were talking about eight months in traction or losing the leg.
“I rang another surgeon – you knew all the good surgeons in those days – and he said he could do something, but I had to get myself down to London to see him. It was bad form for him to go into another surgeon’s hospital, apparently. I had to work something out, so I got hold of John Cooper
(the top British racer) and he borrowed an ambulance from Tom Wheatcroft (the owner of Donington Park) and John turned up in it to drive me to London. The doctors said it was crazy and that I could die, but I discharged myself anyway and off we went.
I could feel all the bones scraping against each other as we went down the motorway – it was just horrible.
“But it worked out and the surgeons in London did a brilliant job plating it – I walked out in a month and was only in plaster for six weeks.” Chas pauses, a smile lingering on his lips as he sips his Chianti. “There was a lovely matron looking after me, who I got on very well with. My wife thought I was having an affair, but I really wasn’t,” he says, eyes twinkling at the memory of the non-affair. “She was a very lovely lady, though.”
Famous for his playboy lifestyle in the ’70s, Chas spent 10 years doing GPS and was at the pinnacle from 1972 to 1976, during which period he came second and third in 125 championships, third in 350s, and fourth, fifth and sixth in 250s. He won seven GPS (four of them at the Isle of Man) and would have won the 125 championship in 1972 if the rules hadn’t allowed riders to drop their two lowestscoring rounds – without that, his points total was 15 points more than the eventual winner, Angel Nieto.
His consistency was remarkable, especially given the frailty of the bikes and the often catastrophic nature of even the smallest crash. In that 1972 125 season, for example, he was only off the podium three times. Chas attributes this to his famously elevated capacity for partying.
“My finish record was very good because I never rode anywhere at 100%. I was too intent on having a good life. Now I look back and think I was a complete tw*t and should have concentrated far more. But I was too busy enjoying myself and meeting lots of beautiful young ladies. That’s been my downfall all my life, but I don’t regret it and I’ve never hurt anyone – all my old flames have remained friends.”
Interestingly, if you look at Chas’s race history, almost all his best results were on the most statistically lethal tracks, such as the Isle of Man. “At the more dangerous circuits everyone was riding at 90-95%, the same as me. Without being big-headed, I think I had as much ability as anyone who won a world championship, but I wasn’t prepared to push to 100% because you knew in those days that if you crashed, you died. But at circuits like Assen which were slightly safer – but still dangerous – some riders pushed harder. I kept at 90-95% everywhere.”
It also helped if you were lucky, and Chas admits he was. The most famous occasion was when he was the only man to walk away from the horrendous 12-rider crash that killed Jarno Saarinen and Renzo Pasolini in 1973 at Monza. “I can remember going into the Grand Curve, seeing Paso’s bike seizing and thinking: ‘f**k, this is going to be bad’.
“Paso’s bike hit the barrier, bounced back and burst into flames. I had no choice but to ride through the flames and Paso was right there – I just ran straight into him. I was right on the outside by the barrier when I hit him and my bike went up like that [gestures vertically] and I fell off and slid along by the barrier. All those who were so badly injured were towards the centre or inside of the circuit.”
Now 70, Chas is a compelling raconteur, whose stories are peppered with mischievous grins as he relives moments of hilarity or high excitement (both often involving Paul Smart, but we’ll come to that). This accident, however, has clearly left deep emotional scars. “I can still visualise the crash now,” he says. “I can visualise going to Jarno and seeing most of his head was missing, and going to Kanaya [Japanese racer Hideo, who survived] and he was moaning.
“There were 12 of us in that crash and I was the only one who wasn’t injured. What a charmed life I’ve lived – it was pure luck that I wasn’t killed. It was bloody awful. I was getting flashbacks for a long time. But you have to make a decision to either continue in the life that you’ve known and loved for donkey’s years, or go and be a normal person in a normal job. And I just couldn’t jack it in.”
The waitress delivers another glass of red – true to his playboy reputation, Chas won’t allow any water on the table – and I bring him back to the start of his career. Where did this addiction to racing come from? “Well, my grandfather was chief test pilot for Vickers during the war and he did the first flight on the Spitfire in 1932, among other things. We’ve got speed in our family. Dad raced at Brooklands pre-war, got a gold star on a Brough and a Norton, which you got for a 100mph lap.
“In 1962 dad wanted to get involved in bike racing again and he told Francis Beart (the Norton tuner) that he wanted to sponsor a young rider. They went down to Brands Hatch and picked out Joe Dunphy and Griff Jenkins. Francis sponsored Joe and dad sponsored Griff. They went over to do the Manx GP in 1963 and took me with them, so I saw Griff beat Peter Darvill [another Beart-sponsored rider] into second and Jimmy Guthrie in third.
“They were all Francis Beart bikes and all had to be stripped to check they weren’t oversized, but Francis didn’t have enough people. As a 14-year-old boy I was over the moon, being handed all these warm engine parts as they were taken off the bikes. Apart from a visit to the TT the previous year, that was my first involvement in racing and I thought: ‘I really want to do this’.”
Soon after, Chas’s dad started the UK’S first motorcycle race school where Paul Smart was one of the first pupils and later became an instructor. “My first race was July 25, 1965 at the Stars of Tomorrow at Brands Hatch on an RAS 250 Greeves. I finished fourth and Smarty won it. He was four or five years older than me, so I was always looking up to him.
“The next year, Motorcycle News started their Clubman Championship and dad sponsored Smarty and me. Smarty won the championship, but second place went down to the last round at Snetterton where I was fighting with a guy called John Blanchard. I got a good start and was in the lead, with John second, and down Snetterton’s long straight I suddenly felt my bike speed up – Smarty had come alongside and was pushing me! Smarty won, I finished second and John third, and that’s how the championship finished. Smarty and I have remained friends ever since.”
Smarty pops up a lot in Chas’s stories, usually accompanied by raucous laughter. When, for example, Chas had to take his Villa motor back to the factory in Modena, Smarty came along for the ride. “He’d met a lady in Finland and so had I, so we got in my Austin 1100 and drove non-stop to Italy. We dropped off the engine and set off to Finland. Bear in mind we’d been driving for 15 hours by then.
“Smarty was driving and I woke up around Stuttgart to a terrible crashing noise as trees and bushes hit the car. Smarty eventually stopped and said we’d had a blow-out, but of course we hadn’t – he’d fallen asleep and veered off the road. Half the car was smashed up and only one light worked, but we carried on; 48 hours later we’d been stopped by the police about five times because of the lights being out, but we got to Stockholm to catch the ferry to Helsinki.
“We got off the boat and spent the night at my girlfriend’s house which was near the port. The next morning we tried to set off for Imatra to see Smarty’s lady, but it was -20°C and the battery was solid ice. We got another battery and the guy selling it saw the car and said we couldn’t possibly drive any further because we had summer tyres. We told him it would be fine because we were English.
“By the time we got near Imatra we hadn’t seen a car in ages and the road was sheet ice, so Smarty pulled the handbrake and the car did a full 360° and embedded itself in a snowbank. We were giggling, and kept the engine running while we waited for someone to come along and pull us out. But after 15 minutes no cars had passed and it dawned on me that we were in trouble – it was -30°C and we had less than a quarter of a tank of fuel.
“Smarty is hard as nails, but he was starting to panic
‘THE CAR DID A FULL 360° AND EMBEDDED ITSELF IN A SNOWBANK’
and said he’d start walking back to Lappeenranta which was around six miles away. I told him he’d die – neither of us had winter clothes on. We had to sit it out in the car. After about two hours a car came along and the guy pulled us out. Once he saw the state of our car, he told us he’d drive with us to Imatra and then make sure we took it to a garage. So we stayed at Smarty’s girlfriend’s place until the tyres got done. This is the sort of thing the racers miss these days – they never have any fun.”
By 1967 Chas was looking for the next step up, after coming second in the MCN Clubmans the year before. By chance, his dad had decided to get out of the racing school business, and he offered it to Chas on the condition that he never came to him for any more money. “He thought that common sense would prevail and I’d give up racing and run the school,” says Chas, that impish grin appearing again. “But of course I closed the school, sold all the bikes and used the money to buy a few really good race bikes – a Honda CR93, a 350 Ducati and a 250 I can’t remember.”
With some fast bikes, his racing career was moving forward and in 1969 he started his first 125 GP. “It was in Finland and I finished sixth – I was pleased with that! But of course then you think ‘I can do this easily’ and we went to Czecho next and in the 125 race I didn’t get a good start. I thought I’d overtake a couple of the MZ riders, lost the front end and the bike hit Jurgen Lenk [an East German rider] who then took out Kel Carruthers, who was leading the 250 championship. Kel was furious, swearing madly and laying into Lenk, who was trying to explain that he got hit by me. But Kel didn’t hear. It was 20 years before I admitted to Kel that it was me…”
In 1970 Chas’s results continued to improve. He scored two podiums, one on his 250, the other on his 350 (both Yamahas) and came sixth in the 250 championship. Then came those glory years when he was battling and often beating the best riders in the world. But the spectre of accidents was ever present, and in the end that caused Chas to question whether he should continue.
“One of the places that really used to frighten me was Spa Francorchamps, because so many people died there – I saw Christian Ravel [French champion and GP regular] get killed there in 1971. That was the only place I used to go to church before the race and used to ask him upstairs to keep me alive.
“I took the decision to pack it in when I wasn’t in a position to be doing well. In 1976 I finished third in the 350 World Championship and in 1977 I had a massive accident at Daytona on a 250 and my helmet came off in mid-air – as I was flying through the air, I thought: ‘That’s it, I’m dead’. Steve Baker, Kenny Roberts, Steve Mclaughlin and I were barrelling into the chicane and I outbraked Mclaughlin but I went too deep, ran out of road, hit the straw bales and I flew over the top.
“When I landed, I saw blood all over my leathers and thought: ‘Oh, I’m dead’. Then I thought: ‘Hang on, surely dead people can’t see this kind of thing’. Then I passed out.” It turned out the strap on Chas’s experimental AGV helmet had rotted after being stored wet. “I was unbelievably lucky to survive. It affected me. The next year, I did GPS and wasn’t riding very well. Instead of battling for third or fourth place behind the MVS, I was battling for ninth to 11th and at the end of the year I thought I’d stop GPS.”
Eventually retirement loomed, but it was tough. “Stopping racing is so difficult because of the hole it leaves in your life. The travel, excitement, social life... it’s so hard to give up. I dealt with it by going cold turkey and having nothing to do with racing for years. But when I tell modern racers about what we got up to, they can’t believe it. I’ve had some fun in my life! And I wouldn’t change any of it at all.”
‘ONE OF THE PLACES THAT REALLY USED TO FRIGHTEN ME WAS SPA FRANCORCHAMPS’