Dave Croxford
In part two of our look at the life and times of Dave Croxford, we examine his time as a works rider with the famed John Player Norton team at the height of his career.
The Ruislip Rebel returns to wax lyrically in part two of this feature on his career and his popular Norton days. We find out: was he really a crasher? How did he get on with Peter Williams? Did one of his bikes really become a lamp-stand? And how many Astons can a man have? Not enough, clearly! Ha!
“Iremember at Andover one time, we were out celebrating with Frank Perris. Later, I must have wedged my clenched fist inside my other arm, then slept on it in the car – killing a nerve!” – Dave Croxford recalls surely the most bizarre injury in the history of motorcycle racing, with his better half Pauline. “Let me see, we were in the Aston, weren’t we Pauline? I had to lift my arm up to put it on to the steering wheel and the next day we had to drive to Clermont-ferrand, in France, to go racing. “So we got there, I put my hand on the handlebar for the race and… it promptly fell off. I said to the team: ‘Well it’s a bit awkward with one arm!’ “So, I was going past the start-finish line swinging it, trying to get it back up on the ’bar and everyone’s going ‘He’s waving, the flash git!’ I raced like that for a month. The arm took six months to recover properly and what was bloody annoying was that when we’d woken up in the morning we looked out of the car in which we’d slept and thought: ‘Bloody hell, there’s a hotel just over there!’
“And today, going through the pictures, you can see I went through Aston Martins. Look – a DB5 in British Racing Green and we’ve got the seats out of it, sitting on the beach at the Barcelona 24hr race. There’s half a million pounds’ worth there and look what we were doing with it! I could cry my eyes out!”
He could, but he’s not. He’s laughing, as he would have been back in the 1970s. Croxford might have been a multiple British Champion, Master of Mallory, King of Brands and all the rest, but the crucial thing was that Dave was on a works deal when works deals no longer really existed, and all due to a passing remark to Norton team manager Frank Perris.
Meanwhile, for some reason, riders of the calibre of Tony Rutter, Mick Grant and Phil Read hadn’t really worked out for Norton – all for different reasons, of course. As such, come 1973, Croxford got the Norton deal.
“There was nothing comparable at the time,” says Dave today. “Triumph was pretty much gone, though you were still up against the triples. You had Percy Tait, Ray Pickrell and obviously John ‘Mooneyes’ Cooper. But that was a proper Mk.1 John Player Norton I had and of course, soon as I got on this after the BSA I thought to myself: ‘Christ this is good!’ I did really well on it.
“So, Frank says: ‘Go on then Dave, we’ll give you the 24hr ride.’ Once more we were going really well. At the time I used to have a blue stripe down my leathers and I thought that was flash, as everyone was in black back then. But a guy came out – Rod Scivyer – with white leathers and we all thought ‘what the f***!’”
It might have been a shock, but Croxford was on the Norton just as John Player switched from their indifferent blue and white livery to the iconic red, white and blue. So, what the JPN bikes lacked in performance they made up for in visual impact. Which Croxford only emphasised.
He immediately made his mark, as while he was not in the 1973 Transatlantic squad – established team-mate Peter Williams was
– he took a third place in the MCN Superbike support race at Brands, as first four-stroke home. The result: he got the nod as stand-in for a crash-damaged and shaken John Cooper at the Mallory Park round, scoring a 4th place finish before being thwarted in the second leg by a loose oil pipe.
It was 4th again and 7th at Oulton, which were good results considering he wasn’t even meant to be riding. Even better results with the JPN liveried bikes followed, but Croxford sealed his place in folklore on Sunday, August 5 – at Brands Hatch.
The Hutchinson 100 always seemed to be lashed with rain and 1973 was no exception. It didn’t help that the race ran the circuit backwards, but Barry Sheene and Mick Grant handled the unfamiliar layout admirably. They took the chequered flags and the champagne, while Croxford took largely to the floor. Crox and the Norton went body surfing several times and he was caught for posterity – frame by frame – waving to Sheene, as Barry passed and enthusiastically waved back. Croxford recalls: “Three times I crashed that day and Frank said; ‘Do we think we could finish the last race?’ Crox did, taking a creditable 4th behind team-mate Peter Williams, but it was Croxford who got all the publicity. The ‘Crasher’ epithet was finally sealed.
The odd couple
Williams winning and Croxford binning was an odd combination. Indeed, to most outsiders Peter and Dave looked like the team-mates from hell. But it worked out a treat. Everything that one was, the other wasn’t. Norton also learned there was no such thing as bad publicity.
With Croxford on board – or not – it was front page news whether one of their bikes went round for a victory lap, or back to the paddock in a wheelbarrow. The British industry was up against it and for a patriotic fan base the effort was applauded as much as the result.
Dave says: “We were chalk and cheese, but we got on really well, me and Willie, but were both so different. Peter was on another level as a racer really and he beat me more than I beat him. But when I did he’d come over and say: ‘Bloody hell Dave I couldn’t keep up with you today!’ And in practice I’d be over asking: ‘What you doing Pete?’ when he was working on the bikes. Places like Brands Hatch, practice, he’d be putting washers in the front forks and I’d be saying: ‘What are you messing around with those little washers for. Come on, we’re off down the pub!’
Of course it wasn’t until 1974 when he had his accident, when Frank said: ‘ Do you want to borrow Peter’s bikes?’ It was then that I found out what he was up to. Jesus Christ no wonder he put the time in because boy
did they handle! They were no faster than mine, the engines were the same, but they handled, and of course 1974 was a real good year for me as I won the 750 Championship when you had Stan Woods on the big Suzuki. He never forgets it. Last corner, Clearways, on the water-cooled Suzuki and he fell off it. Otherwise he could have won. It was the Superbike title I think it was called back then?
“Of course, by then, I realised the writing was on the wall for the Norton as we were starting to struggle when the two-strokes came in. Think of it, on the front row of the grid you had Sheene, Woods, Ditchburn on their big two-strokes, pulling huge wheelies away from the line on the power alone… The only time you got the front wheel in the air on the Norton was loading it into the back of the van!
How well you did was always down to the first corner with the John Player Norton, so if you didn’t pass half a dozen riders you’d had it, and I couldn’t get the Norton as fast off the line as Peter could.
“But then there was always Gerard’s at Mallory Park… that was my favourite corner! If you got off 8th or 9th say, by the time you came out the other end you could be 2nd. I had a really odd outside line round there: I’d run wide, tuck it in, then power it on. I was always good around there. It was the same at Paddock Hill Bend at Brands Hatch – you had to overtake at Paddock. It was hard, but you were hungry for the money back then and the crowd liked it as there was your old-fashioned Norton against these Japanese bikes. I was up against it, the crowd knew it and they loved it. If you passed a couple of blokes, the crowd went berserk and you might only be in 9th place or something!”
It’s fair to say the John Player Norton years were special. The Croxford-williams partnership had the kind of on-track chemistry you’d normally only see in a rock band. Williams was the quiet, introspective, highly thoughtful problem solver who worked at his art and very much saw it as such: a series of problems to be overcome, to make an obsolete vehicle competitive. He went about his track craft much the same way. Croxford on the other hand was the chest-thumping front man. Win it or bin it and excusable if he did, since he probably generated more publicity off the Norton than on, whether in the paddock or on his backside. In today’s world, a PR man would have snapped him up and made him a Guy Martin style character.
While Barry Sheene was the rough diamond in 1973, Croxford was made from pure Kryptonite. The image was all there: the white leathers, long blonde hair, the ‘Carry On’ grin and an eye for the camera lens. The only problem was that by 1975 he was on an excruciatingly slow motorbike – even if it paid…
“I had three contracts,” explains Crox. “And I’ve still got them around here somewhere – and they said you had do the TT, you had to do the 750 series – that was Spa, ClermontFerrand, certain other meetings – and with John Player Norton it was hands-on in the early days but about 30 people were involved and it was a real good time. We flew from Brands Hatch to the Isle of Man, Frank Perris and
that: all of us flying, while the bikes went in a Budget rent-a-van. When we went to places like Imola we had the biggest transporter – I remember it swaying everywhere with welding bottles in it.
“And while I kept my own Seeleys and always maintained those bikes myself, with Norton it was back to Andover every time and of course old Norman White is still there now.
“It was about £5000 a year and I kept any prize money. But in 1975, before I rode the Cosworth, Frank said to me: ‘We still owe you fifteen hundred quid. Do you want your John Player Norton, or fifteen hundred quid?’ In hindsight I should have had the bike! I had three Aston Martins too, but everyone has their tale to tell, don’t they?”
They do, but not quite on a par with Dave Croxford who was on his own at JPN following Peter Williams’ career-ending crash at the end of 1974. Williams was the technical genius behind Norton’s success and without him, in retrospect, it was obvious they were doomed to fail. In the interim however, Croxford prospered as, ironically, he preferred the bike Williams had rejected.
“The monocoque was more Peter’s style,” says Croxford. “To see him at the TT on that: wow, he was motoring – 109mph! After, I just said: ‘Bloody hell Peter!’ He was fast. But the Space Frame Norton, that was my bike. The 850 was a real good bike too. You had to be on form to beat me somewhere like Mallory. That was the frame to have but the John Player Norton, at Spa? The straight was about one-mile long. Phil Read was on the MV, there was Agostini and that, and you had no hope on the Norton. The first corner after the start, that uphill sweep was quite a scary, flat-in-top, sort
of bend, though you could do it on the Norton. “We did the 750 championship – Spa, Clermont-ferrand – and I doubt I’d been over 125mph on the Norton on a British short circuit. But there you were 135-140mph and when you came to the corners it didn’t really want to turn. And if you rolled off you’d had it. It would run wide with the gyroscopic force and I can tell you I really didn’t like it!”
Legends all…
Crox would rub leathers with many legends during his career – especially during the famed Transatlantic races. “I remember Kenny Roberts out for the first time 1974, along with
all the other Yanks,” says Dave. “Oulton Park was coming up and what happened? It rained. What rubber did we have? TT100S in a soft rubber. They did work, nothing wrong with ‘em! But of course, the Yanks were there, shod with Goodyears. We’d never seen them before. They were slicks but then they also had a proper rain tyre.
So, at Mallory Park it rained, I looked at Kenny’s tyre and said: ‘You’ve got no chance mate against me in the rain!’ Of course we get going and I’m thinking: ‘Kenny – how’s he staying on?’ I couldn’t keep up and he had a slick on!
The event demonstrated how near the end
was for Norton, with that 1974 Transatlantic series being one of the last hurrahs for the JPN team. The push-rod Norton, dating back to 1947, was woefully out of date and as such Norton clutched at straws. Doubting their own ability to develop a new engine they outsourced it to Cosworth, with very disappointing consequences.
Two cylinders were taken from the three-litre V8 DFV Formula 1 car engine, to form the basis of a 100-115-horsepower 750cc parallel twin. They were going to give the Japanese a damn good thrashing, but the project was compromised from the start in having the brief to fill the gap for a road bike unit too. It was a massive disappointment.
“With the Cosworth it was never on the cards,” says Crox. “Peter had had his accident, so he wasn’t really involved with it. If he had been he would probably have made it a little bit better, but everywhere you went it was a second slower than the old 850 Commandobased Norton. It had no flywheels, so it locked up and that’s why they put a counter balancer in it. As, at the end of the straight when you rolled the throttle off, it wanted to lock up. It had me off once and I said: ‘I only rolled it off!’ That’s why they put that counter weight in.
“But that just got bigger and bigger. It was rideable out of the box, and quick in a straight line, but then you got to the corners! When you shut it off, the thing would lock the back wheel. It nearly had me off a couple of times, so when we went testing at Snetterton, in the wet, I went out and said to the guys: ‘Look, I’ll go past the start-finish, come up to the first corner and I’ll roll it off and you’ll see what happens.’ So, I rolls it off, it locks the back wheel and I go down the road: ‘Told you so!’
“Years later I run it again at Pukekohe, New Zealand. But if you blipped the throttle the cam-belt jumped on the sprockets…”
The Cosworth needed development and John Player weren’t going to spend infinite money. Indeed, Norton were now bundled in with the remnants of the BSA Group, as part of NVT: which did at least offer other possibilities. Croxford would never claim to be a TT specialist but he became one over the epic 10-lap Production TT, in 1975. He not only gained a whole lot more track experience in the processes but the TT Production crown too. Riding the legendary Triumphtrident, Slippery Sam, in partnership with co-rider Alex George, for the last of its five consecutive victories, it was also the one which Les Williams – former Triumph mechanic and by then machine owner – said he was most proud of.
Dave was no stranger to distance events – he won the Thruxton 500-miler with Mick Grant on a Norton in 1972 and on a triple, with Triumph works rider Percy Tait, in 1971. And it was the man he’d co-ridden a Kawasaki with, in the 1970 event, who came through with a potential life line: Barry Sheene. This would be the offer of a Suzuki RG500 but it never quite played out and ironically the 1976 500-miler would be Dave’s swan song.
Dave explains: “Barry was going to get me a ride on the Suzuki. He said: ‘ Do you want a ride?’ But in the meantime Percy Tait lent me one at Snetterton. I went out and of course Sheene was there, Smarty was there and they already had the things. So I was going down
that Norwich straight, as it was a long straight then, and bloody hell you were passing everyone! ‘ No wonder they’re winning everything’ I thought.
“But it was no way to race, really. In 1976, I was only 33, but I thought to myself: ‘Dave, you’re not going to get a works Yamaha or Suzuki.’ And with the Cosworth the writing was on the wall. I raced the Japauto Honda at the Thruxton 500-miler, got a 3rd there (with Gary Green), drove out of the circuit and never went back to racing. I walked away and bought some fishing rods and went fishing at Blenheim Palace, I went scrambling with my son a bit, but I’d had enough. I had a car gearbox business – TR5S and that – rode bikes on the road, had a motorhome and I was always really lucky. I never broke a bone in about 300 bloody crashes. Then comes Windy Corner and that bloody caliper!”
Ah yes, the Triumph Legends Series. Crox explains: “Roger Winterburn got me a good bike, nothing wrong with it, but Roger didn’t want to put a new tyre on it and then when they did they left a caliper bolt loose. So, I did my collarbone in the crash. Read was there, Dave Aldana, all the Americans. So the following year I came back and they had a big pow-wow and said they wanted Phil to win one and Gary Nixon to win the other and just play it out between you all. Alright then… so, I get going and am about 12th or 13th going into Gerard’s and thought to myself: ‘These tossers are racing, this isn’t a parade!’ And I went absolutely full-on. So, I won that race! What happened was Bob Heath came up to us before the race and said: ‘By the way. I blew my BSA up halfway around Gerard’s and there’s oil all the way round. I’m sorry about that.’
“So, fortunately people just knocked it off a bit. But me, I loved it around Gerard’s, as I said earlier and I went right round the outside of it all and just rolled it a bit where I crossed the oil. Saying that, I was a bit ‘windy’ at the hairpin, where I dropped it the year before!
We can excuse him for that, as it was a good 20 years since Dave had officially retired. And, after all, he did win it and ahead of riders much younger. Crasher? Perhaps, but winner definitely and Crox is as popular with the fans now as he was back in the 1970s, where he made the rarest of exits: out on top and as a peerless crowd pleaser.