Alan Carter: Light in the Darkness
The first instalment of our threepart serialisation of the most incredible motorcycle racing book you’ll ever read. Get a taste of it here in Classic Racer and then go and buy yourself a copy of the tome. It’ll be one of the most fascinating books you’ll ever own.
As a reader of Classic Racer, you’re probably more than familiar with the name Alan Carter – his career bore deep into the psyche of race fans around the world. In his book, Light in the Darkness: The Truth about Mal, Kenny and Me, Alan gives his complete story the platform it deserves. Over the next three issues of CR, we’ll give you a snippet of what’s in store and where you can buy it. Here’s part one…
Overnight sensation
If our Kenny couldn’t pull it off in LA due to being robbed, bad luck, his own poor judgement or whatever else you want to call it, I was about to shock the world of road racing. The 1982 season had been getting increasingly better and it was about to get a whole lot better still when (dad) Mal bought me one of Kawasaki’s factory vans. It had everything and was so good, you wanted to live in it. The awning alone was massive, half the size of any race paddock. To my shock, dad also got me a second-hand, but looking good as new, bike to race – the British-made Armstrong-ccm 250cc fitted with an Austrian Rotax engine. It was the sweetest thing I ever rode. And to top that, he recruited a young, hungry GP spannerman called Doug Holtom, who worked for the CCM factory in Bolton. We would become lifelong friends. After several impressive showings at national level, the season was coming to a close. The world championships had finished and there was a new 250cc world champion in France’s Jean-louis Tournadre. He and all the other Grand Prix stars were coming to England for the last big international of the year, the Jody Scheckter World Cup at Donington Park. All the big names were there... Kenny Roberts, Barry Sheene, Randy Mamola, the lot, plus all the top 250cc GP riders. Dad agreed my start money with Donington owner Tom Wheatcroft. My starting price in 1982 was £2500, plus prize money, and dad footed the bill for everything. Boy, I was a high-flyer now. I’d hit the big-time – Vegas here we come! Oh, by the way, caravans were supplied by Mal with a bit of a twist. You didn’t enter them in the conventional way – via the door with a key. This is what I was told to do: “Nipper, I’ve lost the f****“keys, so get up on that roof and f****** rip off the skylight, climb inside and open the door.“So that’s what I did. My next job was to go up to Goodalls, our local caravan dealer in Huddersfield, near Whitham’s airfield, and buy a new lock and skylight. I’ll leave the question of where these caravans came from to your imagination. We left for Donington all kitted out with a new van and a caravan in tow – the works. Under strict orders from Mal, his wife Janet filled it with enough food to feed an army, so
my mates Kev Mitchell and Eggis and I were well set for a wonderful weekend. But not for long. We were zooming down the M1 as happy as Larry when, all of a sudden – bang! – one of the caravan wheels fell off. How I managed to control the van that was pulling it was purely down to luck. The undercarriage was badly damaged and basically, we were in deep shit. Well, when you were in the shit you only did one thing – ring Big Mal.
HHE knew everything but his solutions to pproblems were not always what moost normal people would arrive at. Insstead of sending for a rescue and reppair vehicle or phoning the police fo r help, dad took a much more ba asic approach. He told us to get ev verything out of the caravan, rip the n umberplate off, leave it on the hard s shoulder and, in typical no-nonsense s style, to “f*** off as fast as you can”. So we abandoned the caravan r right there at the side of the M1 and continued on our way south to Castle Donington, Derbyshire in the customis sed Kawasaki van. On arrival at Donington for practice, I was a relative unknown in this GP paddock, so no one really took much notice of me – even though I think I’d finished among the top 10 in practice. We had problems on the Friday and Saturday, blowing two engines, and to top that the experienced Frenchman Christian Estrosi was absolutely flying. He was half-a-second faster than me and no way was I going to beat this man. Plus he was riding a Pernod. I mean, what the f***“was that? I thought it was a drink. And I only knew that much because Pam, our Kenny’s wife, used to drink it on a night out. Doug went back to the CCM factory in Bolton that Saturday night with two engines that had basically been destroyed but he worked all night, bless him, and made one good engine. He came back on the Sunday morning, fitted it and we were going racing – all thanks to a genius who had pure dedication and the will to win, just like me. That was the best engine I ever raced – so thank you Dougie. Things got even better for me. The only guy I didn’t think I could beat, Christian Estrosi, had a giant crash in the morning on cold tyres down the Craner Curves. This was a fifth gear, 120mph-plus accident. If you crashed there, you weren’t getting up and they carted
him off to hospital. I couldn’t believe my luck. I won every race that day, beating new world champion Jean-louis Tournadre and I don’t know how I did it. I just got stuck in, passing and going through them like a knife through butter. I was flying. I’d become an overnight sensation, the hottest young property in the world of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. The press went into a frenzy – everyone wanted a piece of me. I was being billed as the next Barry Sheene. On that bank holiday weekend in August 1982 I became the youngest international winner of all time. But looking back now, I wasn’t ready for GP racing. At 18 I was still too young and needed to gain more experience of different tracks. I was just like a big lump of coal that needed lots of polishing into a fine diamond. But I had no choice the following year – 1983 – I was going Grand Prix racing. And you know what? I neither feared nor respected anyone. I was The Kid and these old-timers were having it. Boy, was I in for a shock. Talk about naive.