Guy& Pete go racing
Team mate Guy Martin inspects the bike he’ll ride at Spa. It’s coming together
THE TEAM IS WELL on with building the bikes for the classic endurance race at Spa in June and everyone in the team is playing their part, including my team mate Guy. He is a very busy man with work and filming for his next TV adventure so he’d not actually seen the bike yet, but he’s pretty clued up on GSX-R’S and endurance racing, so Pete Littlewood (the team manager) and I took one of the bikes over to his house for him to cast his eye over. Riding with a French team on a Suzuki GSX-R1000 he finished second at the Le Mans 24 hour race in 2013 so he’s got a bit of form in endurance racing. If his experience can make the bikes a bit faster, or make a wheel change happen a bit quicker we want to pick up on that and make the most of it. Whenever you go to Guy’s it’s never a quick job. He always makes you a brew in the biggest cups you’ve ever seen and has a nice piece of cake on offer as well. Then we trip out to see what’s happening in the workshop. There are engines and real strange parts all over the new workshop, with a huge John Deere tractor and lorry in one side, his beautiful BSA Rocket 3 classic racer, and some other bikes and machine tools on the other side. He’s just in the process of getting a dyno put in, so gives us a tour of the room with massive cooling fan at the back, then says, ‘anyway lets get the bike in boy.’ Pete gets it out of the Toyota people carrier and brings it in… Guy spots the frame (its a ’91 frame with a ’93 swingarm) and gets excited about its look and the rear axle quick release mod – strange you may say, well this is Guy and where there’s a good bit of engineering he can tell. The Yoshimura pipe looks well too. Then he is off like a machine gun with questions to me and Pete about the engine, talking about what clutch to use etc etc. He suggests that once the engine is built we should get it on the new dyno and get it all tuned up and ready to go. We know he is pretty excited about riding it and so am I. He asks me again, ‘what rounds are we doing, I can’t wait to race at Spa it was mega last year, wasn’t it boy!’ Yep I can’t wait either. Hopefully the engines will be built sharpish and we can get them on the dyno and running sweet, but before we run the 750s we’ll be at Donington on 13 May for the first round of the Endurance Legends championship. The cut-off year for that is 1986 so the 750s aren’t eligible. Instead we’ll be riding Kev Pearson’s 1100cc Suzuki XR69 which he always prepares beautifully. It should go well.