RUN OF SUCCESS
“1999 was a good year. I started jelling with the bike.” Donington Park was memorable within the Castrol Honda team. “That was where me and Aaron came together. He passed me going into the bottom hairpin, and I snuck up under him and his handlebar hit my footpeg. He crashed, got all p****d off at me saying that I took him off.” Colin went on to win race two, and the friendship officially went on hold. “In Austria it was me, Aaron, and Fogarty. We gambled and put a slick rear on with an intermediate front after the sighting lap. It started to sprinkle a little bit and by the end of the race it was a full freaking wet track and I could hardly hold any lean angle. I saw my pit board saying +0 and I thought Fogarty was right on my ass; turned out that it said +10. I put on this banzai last lap. There are times when you look back on your career and think ‘that was crazy’. But it worked out.” Again Colin was to sweep at Brands Hatch and in the end was second in the WSB championship. The following year saw the new Honda V-twin appear. “We had already tested the twin a year before. That bike was far from perfect, we had chatter, but it was a lot better than the RC45. I was determined to win that first race. I’d been sucking hind tit for so long trying to race against Ducati with a 750. That year Haga had his drug thing, and no one knew what they were going to do. He was still in the Championship and fighting.
“FOR 2003, I SIGNED A LETTER OF INTENT WITH DUCATI BEFORE THE LAST RACE AT IMOLA TO RIDE WORLD SUPER BIKE FOR THEIR FACTORY TEAM, REPLACING TROY.”
And then Fogarty messed his s*** in Australia, and he was done. So, it was me and Haga.” Colin won four of the last six races, and the final race was at Brands Hatch. It wasn’t the way anybody wanted to win the championship, with Haga being penalised and having to sit out the race. “It’s funnier than s*** man. It rained but it was drying out, with a dry line in a couple of the corners. Adrian, my crew chief, asked ‘what do you think about a rain front and an intermediate rear’? It was a gamble when everybody else had rains front and rear. After the first lap I was way back. It just wanted to snap sideways. It took the whole race and I was catching them, going five seconds faster than the leaders with two laps to go. I got into turn three a little hot and folded the front. I’d done all that work. I got the bike started and finished eighth. I’d have won if I’d only stayed on the damn bike.” Colin won the second race to finish out his first World Championship. “The following year it was the same bike, the SP1, 2001 was the chatter year. We could not stop it! We took engine bolts out, did everything we could to try to dampen it. If you had a 250 style, the small-profile tyre worked fine. It didn’t have anything for traction though. The other tyre put more meat on the ground. If you didn’t use it you couldn’t stay with the other guys coming off the corners. There were tracks where I gambled on the smaller rear tyre because the chatter was so bad. That bike was such a struggle.” Colin was to win the Suzuka 8 Hour in 2001 with Valentino Rossi. “Everything worked pretty good; it would be the season highlight. All year they had been getting feedback from me. I’d tell them that when I followed Troy (Bayliss) off a corner, I could see the Ducati twisting, grab and go forward. Our bike would chatter or spin, it was so damn stiff. One thing that kind of made a difference was taking the motor mounts off. Another was grinding the engine so there was four or five mil of clearance between the motor and the frame.”