BIKE LIFE
Ecstacy and heartache in Aragon, Spain. That’s classic racing for you…
Boastie goes racing and almost wins. JP goes racing and comes 11th. Helmets assessed, Fireblade’s winterproofed, plus Mot-less mopeds in a skip.
When the call comes to race it must be answered. Team Classic Suzuki and I tackle the European Endurance Championship…
WITH MY PREVIOUS team mate, Guy Martin, at home after the birth of his baby daughter, it was down to me and Michael Neeves, who knows Aragon, and Team Classic Suzuki. First job for me: learn the track. It’s a lot tighter than it looks on TV. My qualifying went OK, but as Neevesy went out the bike wouldn’t start, and backfired. With hindsight, that must have been the point when the starter gear screws sheared. After four laps he was in, losing power and trailing smoke. Crew chief Nathan decided to strip the motor, which meant we missed the next two qualifying sessions. Without being asked, John from the Neate Racing team came over and offered us a go on his Honda, so we could each complete the minimum of three qualifying laps. He even let us ride it again to get used to night riding. Thank you John. Meanwhile Nathan did a deal with the SERT Team to borrow a blown GSX1100 engine, so that he could make one good one out of the two. One of our sheared starter gear screws had ended up wedged between a piston and the liner, so we needed their two pistons and the barrels. At one point nine of our team were working on the two motors. Someone blowing out a crankcase with compressed air lost an oil jet, and suddenly everybody was looking for a piece of metal the size of a mouse dropping. After 20 minutes it turned up in the crankcase. Then a bearing retaining ring went missing. Johnny, Joe and Ken went through an entire dustbin in case it had got thrown away. When that didn’t work they split the donor crankcases to use theirs. Unfortunately we couldn’t pilfer their starter system because it was different. Eventually Nathan started the rebuild, in public. He wasn’t keen on using different compression pistons, but better that than nothing. By midnight the fresh engine was sitting in the frame. Early the next morning the boys got it running, and suddenly we were back in the game. It ran ace in warm-up, and seemed just as powerful as before. Bump starting was hard, and it meant Neevesy had to start the race from the back of the grid. Still, after 40 minutes he’d come from last to tenth, which was brilliant. The bike fired up perfectly for my session, but the setting sun was horrendous. In two places I just lost the corner visually. But we moved up to seventh anyway. Over to Neevesy, and the bike was still running perfectly. I’d just noticed the Phase One team pushing one of their bikes in, and the other going past sounding really bad. So all of a sudden we’d
jumped to fourth. It was getting dark, and Michael hadn’t turned his lights on. We were told we’d get a penalty if he did another three laps like that, so Paul and Dave made a LIT ON sign out of pit board numbers, which did the trick. For my second session I felt much more confident, and when Neevesie went out we found ourselves third. Another team ahead of us thought they’d broken down, but in fact they’d just run out of fuel, wasting several laps. Then Neevesie got caught and passed by a really fast Italian rider from Team Officine Toscane. I had an idea that I was quicker than their other guy, so I tried to suss out what their bike looked like. Maybe we could pull it back? I rejoined the race 60 seconds behind. That’s a lot. I did my best, and sure enough the gap was coming down 6-7 seconds a lap. All of a sudden we had third on the board. I thought I must have passed him in the dark. In fact they’d brought him in and sent out their fast guy again. He passed me somewhere on the far side of the circuit, and I just caught a glimpse of his number: 333. And he kept creeping away. I kept trying and began to pull him back again. There were only a few minutes left. I got alongside him on the start-finish straight. Our bike was fast, so if I could stick with him… I was right on him in the right/left before the long straight. The plan was going to work. Then I trailed the brake in too much and lost the front. It’s weird crashing in the dark. You’ve no idea what you’re going to hit. The bike revved briefly and went quiet. I ran to it, but it took me 20 seconds to get it up because it had a broken handlebar. No matter. If I could hold the clutch in I could ride it back. Then two marshals ran across and tried to stop me. It was then I noticed the fairing was on the front tyre. They put me in a truck and I had to watch all the other riders take the flag, celebrating in the parc ferme. I was so upset for the lads. We wanted a finish. And I really wanted a podium.