AT LUNCH WITH...
He’s raced everything from Bantams to GP bikes and won three world superbike titles as a manager. But his biggest passions are the TT, sand racing and ice speedway
Neil Tuxworth: sand racer, ex-tt rider and Honda race team boss
While competing in 68 TTS, numerous ice speedway internationals and an extraordinary 3680 sand races, Neil Tuxworth got to know his fair share of gifted eccentrics. And he met even more during 28 years spent running Honda race teams in British and World Superbikes and at the TT. But no-one could rival Joey Dunlop.
“He was incredible. Just unbelievable,” says Neil, tucking into a colossal fish and chips at a restaurant near his Louth home. Neil had raced Joey at the TT and North West 200, but got to know him better when he ran Honda’s factory bikes on the Isle of Man. “He was an incredible character, and such a genuine bloke. As a manager, what got me was that he never used any spare parts. When we had the RC30, Carl Fogarty had to have a new set of clutch plates in his bike every single meeting – he wrecked them in two practices and a race. Joey had
the same clutch plates in for three years. Three years! “He rang me up one day and said: ‘I want to put some new piston rings in the RC30 [Joey looked after all his race bikes in those days],’ so I said: ‘No problem Joey, I’ll get them off to you’. I went to the lads in the workshop and told them and they said: ‘Well, if he’s replacing piston rings, he might as well change the pistons and valves and we’ll get some gaskets, too’. So we put together a big box of parts and sent it over. About a week later the box comes back still full of parts with a note inside that says: ‘I only wanted the f***ing piston rings’. He even re-used the gaskets. That was Joey. When he came to Louth [Honda Racing’s UK HQ] we’d always book him a room in the hotel, but he’d always sleep in his van outside the workshop. He was unreal.”
Neil’s delight at having worked with the mercurial Dunlop is clear, but there were times when it was a struggle, particularly when’s Neil’s management career
was in its infancy. “Soon after I joined Honda, I was on the Island and had to pick up Mr Aika – the most important person in Honda racing at the time. We’d been lent two RC30S with £20,000 flatslide carbs – one for Steve Hislop, one for Joey. I met Mr Aika off the plane and he said he wanted to go and see Joey; I thought: ‘Oh no,’ because you never knew what you were going to find. It’s pouring with rain and we turn up at Joey’s workshop; standing there in the yard is the factory RC30 with its cylinder heads off, with nobody about. We get out of the car, look at the bike and the bores are filling up with rain water. Then Mr Aika looks across the yard and sees the £20,000 carbs hanging from a twig poking out from a wall. Joey had just left everything. I’m terrified because I think this is my job on the line. Mr Aika sees me shaking and says: ‘Neil-san. Do not worry. We all know about Mr Dunlop.’ Of course, Joey went on and won the F1 race.”
Curiously, given Neil’s rise to the very top of motorcycle sport – he won the WSB championship as a manager, too – his parents weren’t into bikes at all. “My uncle was, though,” says Neil. “I went to Cadwell to watch scrambling in 1959 [when he was seven] and got hooked on racing. On race days I used to get up at 1am and cycle to Cadwell so I could get in before you had to pay – then I’d hide my bike in the woods and I’d hide in the bales.
“At age 13 I got an old Ariel Colt to ride in the fields, then I got a James 197. Me and some friends set up races in my dad’s fields – just lads on road bikes scrambling round a course marked with posts. I did quite well and we decided we would go road racing for a laugh.
“In 1968 I was 16 and I bought a Bantam off a guy called Alan Jones in London,” says Neil, oblivious to the fact that his memory for names is astonishing. “It was £90, which took me all my summer holidays to earn. I went down on the train and came back in the goods carriage with the bike – I didn’t want to leave it, so I sat in the dark all the way back to Louth.”
This determination, initiative and fearless approach to new challenges set the tone for his racing career. To start with, though, the main problem was cash. “My first race was a Bantam club meeting at Cadwell on March 15, 1969 and there were 310 Bantams – 310! And there must have been over 100 Tiger Cubs. I was fifth reserve in the novice race. Luckily I got into the race and I came second.
‘I RACED SPEEDWAY, ICE SPEEDWAY, GRASSTRACK, MOTOCROSS AND SAND RACING’