Gary Johnson
Howdy folks! I hope you’re all well and having a right old hoot, whatever you’re up to. You’ve got to enjoy life, and bikes are my number one fuel for having a laugh. Admittedly, I wasn’t laughing quite so much when my trusty old Suzuki chose to stop working during the Classic TT, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. No one got hurt, and I had a right blast up until that point. There’s always next year! Since then, it’s been nonstop giggles.
Did you make it to Goodwood for the Classic Revival? That’s one place that deserves to be at the top of your bucket list if you’ve never been before, and not just because it gives you the excuse to dress up in your grandad’s clothes and neck lots of champagne. People really get into it, with the focus being on reliving the glory days of years gone by. You get to see the most awesome bikes, cars and aeroplanes, plus some bloody good racing.
I did my bit by joining forces with that old fast bloke, Mick Grant. I picked him up from his care home and we shared Bob Chapman’s three-cylinder MV Agusta 500 for the revival race. We didn’t do bad either, considering we’ve got a combined rider age of 119 years old (I’m still 23, so you can work out how ancient Granty is). We bagged a win in the first outing and things were looking good for us to clean up in the second race, before we got a penalty that cost us 20 seconds. Even still, I think we only lost the outright win by five seconds, or something daft like that.
But it’s not all been fun and games this month, as I’m already focusing hard on next year’s TT. It’s mad that no matter how hard you go at it, you’re always left wishing you’d had a bit more time to get things sorted ahead of the big event. One class that’s the first to get compromised with practice time if things start going wrong over on the Island, is the Lightweight TT. We’ve got our Zebra bike in a pretty decent place right now, but there’s still so much scope for improvement.
I’ve ridden this bike for a handful of years, I’ve topped time sheets on it, and I really see the potential it has. The guys at WK Bikes/CF Moto are proper grafters, and they’re just as keen as me to put the Chinese-made bike on the top step of the podium, which I genuinely reckon is a possibility. More so because of the strong position it’s now in, and thanks to the fact that we’ve been carrying on our testing programme, which in this last month alone has seen me racing it with No Limits, and taking it on track at Cadwell for a good day of testing.
It’s one of those bikes that gets better the harder you ride it, but there’s still so much scope to bettering the package. All we’re doing right now is clocking the miles and working out what could be improved. It might only be a percentage here and a tweak there, but those accumulated alterations are what give you the best bike on the grid. It’s gonna be a right weapon by the time we’re finished with it!