Suzuki Endurance
We take on the Freetech Endurance Championship… and win!
Iremember the moment clearly, slumped on the sofa, wearing my favourite string vest with a can of ice cold Stella in my hand. Jerry Springer was on the telebox, and I was moments away from finding out whether Dodgy Dave was the father of all three of his cousins’ children when a phone call robbed me of this revelation. “Would you like to race a GSX-R?” came the caller’s query. “It’s all on us. Don’t worry about crashing it (not quite sure what he was suggesting by that). Just turn up and we’ll sort the rest.” Having made my World Superbike support race debut for Suzuki in Germany (European Cup), and my Asian racing debut for the same marque in Indonesia (Suzuki Asian Challenge), the destination of this venture kind of caught me by surprise, almost as much as the machine in question. “We’re going 125cc racing on a completely bog-stock GSX-R125. There’s this kart track up near Newcastle. It’ll be a right laugh. I’ll put your name down,” came his convincing words before hanging up the phone.
Whether I liked it or not, I was in. And I wasn’t on my own. There to share the pleasure/pain of the inaugural round of the Freetech 125 Endurance championship was my good mate Mr Fagan, of 44 Teeth fame, who I met bright and early on a sunny Saturday morning at Teesside Autodrome. It was race day, we were ready for it, and we weren’t about to get disheartened by the wealth of slender competitors who’d obviously not taken the Government’s request to stay at home and fill your faces so staunchly as we had. Considering Al, in his kit, weighed nearly as much as the bike (134kg), he may have even followed the rules a little too closely, and I wasn’t too far behind. But what the hell did it matter? The aim of this game was to have a good laugh, smash in four hours of racing and go home with a GSX-R in just the one piece.
Admittedly, a little silverware was also on our minds, naively passing off the talents and competence of the other 31 teams on the grid, and the 90-plus riders we were up against. Sure, having a bog-stock bike that weighed around 20kg more and made around 3-5bhp less than the average Streetstock machine on the grid was a bit of a disadvantage, but how hard could it be for a couple of (fat) lads with more than 40 years’ combined road racing experience? Surely, we were going to smoke it, and the likes of BSB champ Hudson Kennaugh, road racing’s Dom Herbertson and British Talent Cup rider Fraser Rogers would just have to deal with it. We meant business, and having warmed up with a few lunges, a Maccies breakfast and a quick Covid check from an infrared heat gun, we were ready to rock.
The formula of the day was pretty simple; two hours’ practice followed by a 10-minute qualifying session, and then a four-hour race. Our bike was even more ready than we were, being showroom fresh with its headlights, indicators and even its number plate proudly in place, meaning our mechanic Ian Wilson only had to worry about filling the fuel tank and whipping off the sidestand to comply with the regs. Being a gentleman, I let Al go out first in practice, who returned 20 minutes later with nothing but smiles to report on his first stint. Now it was my turn to make my 125cc racing debut. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but as I exited pitlane and wound the throttle back with vigour, what I got kind of caught me out. I expected the Suzuki to be steady, but the reality of its 13bhp output took some believing. To make things worse, I learned in the first few laps that the lighter, pokier potency of our rivals was set to leave us dreaming of a top-10 finish. Still, the bike handled pretty mint and as I grasped my way around the circuit, figuring which way it went and how much kerb I could run on its relentless flow of apexes, I soon came to learn there was more to the game than the number of ponies you were packing. Like Al, I came back into the pits with a smile on my face and optimism for what could come. Overall, the Suzuki did a decent job in the cornering department, but we figured a wise move would be to lower the front end in the yokes and load the front more. Being dumb and cocky, we tossed off the rest of practice and left it to qually to see how our altered geometry cut it around the circuit. Dismally is probably the best way to describe it, and with little time to make the necessary alterations during the session, both Al and I bumbled around with a front end so sketchy it made loan sharks seem like a sound idea. The good news was we were still in one piece. The bad news was we were down in 19th place on the grid.
An early lunch gave us time to reflect on the morning’s foibles, noting not only our bike was outgunned, but the level of competition was much higher than we’d expected. There were some proper rapid
AFTER A FEISTY GAME OF PAPER, SCISSORS, ROCK, AL BAGGED THE CHANCE TO KICK OFF THE RACE.
riders in the mix and our only hope was that those fast riders were paired with duffers in their team to give us half a chance. This paddock was new territory to both of us, along with the bikes we were up against and the spec they were boasting. It was obvious some people had gone large with their disposable income, while some of the bikes littering the paddock looked like they’d been found in the bottom of a canal.
After a feisty game of paper, scissors, rock, Al bagged the chance to kick off the race. In fairness, he’s renowned for his fitness and the LeMans-style sprint across the grid was surely going to play into his hands. I stood there, bracing the bike, ignition on, first gear selected, as my partner in crime gave it the berries across the track. In a jiffy he was on board, the engine was running and a sound launch meant he’d made up a handful of places by the first corner. Unfortunately, he lost them all the second he got on to the back straight and everyone powered back past him. It was frustrating from the sidelines, and I dare say he had a few choice words buzzing around his helmet as Al got pushed back up the order, but he wasn’t about to take the setback on the chin. Over the next 30 minutes he clawed his way up a few positions before heading into the pits for a breather and burrito. Now it was my turn to feel the wrath of a mildly tuned CBR 125 in full flow, edging past me at a metre a second. The speeds we were racing at were trivial, possibly topping out at 70mph max, but racing is racing and it hurt like hell to be out-blitzed non-stop by pretty much every bike I came into contact with. The only answers could be found through late braking and higher corner speeds, for which the GSX-R could hold its own. Being so small and flimsy, it took time to trust in the Suzuki’s stability but it was impressively planted and my lap times improved as my trust grew. By the end of that first hour we were up in 15th and hell-bent on a singlefigure finish.
Where I left off, Al carried on, pushing our Dunlop Moto3 slicks to their max as he ravished the living daylights out of the standard, non-adjustable suspension. The course was a bit scabby in places, and certain lumps and bumps could lock the front when braking full-bore, but that didn’t seem to slow him. In honesty, we were six seconds a lap slower than the fastest rider and by the midway point it was obvious there was no catching the leaders that were on higher-powered Superstock machines, so our focus fixed on the Streetstock class. What we needed was an injection of horsepower and the kind of weight-saving transformation you see on a slimming club advert. Realistically, the only aid we had was a tediously slowdraining fuel tank. As the level dropped, the bike became marginally more agile and I could kid myself it felt faster than the last time I rode it, but it wasn’t the magic cure we needed.
What did help though was learning to keep the throttle pinned and jab at the clutch to help change up a gear. It probably didn’t do much good for the gearbox, but it proved a worthy tool in the fight for faster lap times.
To put it bluntly we were desperate and as the clock edged down and the end of the race came into sight, Al and I were both riding harder and faster than we had at any stage. Three and a half hours in I set my fastest lap, and Al did exactly the same as he settled in for the final stint. We’d worked our way up to eighth overall, and fourth in class, on a machine that was fit for riding to the shops. It was a tidy result in my book, and we were moments away from cracking open a bottle of diet Coke when Al made a lunge into the pits. He was out of fuel, out of time, and only 40 seconds in front of our nearest pursuer, that just happened to be lapping a few seconds a lap quicker and closing the gap. Melodrama had not been part of the plan, but suddenly we were overwhelmed with the stuff as Fagan cut every shape in the book to get back out there and keep our rivals at the rear, eventually crossing the line just half a second ahead. It was no podium finish, but it felt like a win and got us wondering what could’ve been possible had the bike weighed less and pumped out a competitive amount of horsepower? There was only one way to find out, and so a plan was hatched to head back to the track for round two with a pimped ride and see what kind of impact we could make.
Unfortunately, the only person making an impact was my brother Brod, who launched himself at Snetterton the day before round two, bagging himself a week-long stay in hospital while his swollen brain shrunk back. It meant I missed the round and Boothy had to step in and help Fagan scrap to an impressive second-place finish on the lighter, more potent Suzuki. It also meant that we were now up to second in the championship, with the chance of toppling Hudson from the top spot if by some miracle we gave him a hammering at the season finale. There are some things you just don’t gamble on, and Al and I having enough pace around Mallory was one of them. We needed to bring in a big gun… and Tim Neave was our answer. The only problem was the other 99 teams entered had come up with a similar philosophy, meaning every man and his dog had a BSB rider or two in their mix. The entry list looked like a who’s-who of racing, with everyone from Storm Stacey to Tom Booth-Amos having a punt. This was not going to be the walk in
THE JOB WAS IN TATTERS AND THE TRACK WAS WETTER THAN AN OTTER’S POCKET.
the park we needed it to be, as we soon learned when qualifying concluded and we found ourselves lingering back in 42nd place. The job was in tatters and the track was wetter than an otter’s pocket, with a raging storm meaning the start had to be delayed. It gave us a bit more time to think, and a little more time to make sure the bike was as prepped and fuelled as could be. We’d learned in the first few rounds that even making it to the chequered was half the battle, with crashing and mechanicals proving as common as herpes.
Perhaps the biggest development was a revision to our rider strategy. Changing every 35 minutes, Tim was now set to ride in between Al and me on every occasion, doubling his time on track while keeping within the rules. It was a smart move, just like the call to put him out first and watch him leap into action like a coiled spring, somehow battering his way through to 10th by the second lap. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, we were in the top five by the time he came into pit. Fagan was out next, followed by Tim, before I finally got a crack at the drenched track. The conditions were minging, the riding was beyond close, and it didn’t take long before a late-lunger side-swiped me into the chicane and used me as a berm. It was only right I did the same to him, if only I could catch the bugger. These boys were fast and I was mindful of that as the pitboard reminded me, occasionally slipping back a place without the means to answer. I’m not terrible in the wet, but the lightweight Suzuki, which had to be railed into Gerards flat in sixth without a flinch of the throttle, was testing my balls as the wind did its best to wipe me out on the wet surface. Crashing the bike just wasn’t an option, but being too hesitant was no good either. It was a difficult place to find myself.
CRASHING THE BIKE WASN’T AN OPTION, BUT BEING TOO HESITANT WAS NO GOOD EITHER