Carl Fogarty: I created a MONSTER!
In one of his most frank interviews ever, Carl Fogarty lifts the lid on what he had to do to become one of Britain’s most successful bike racers ever.
In his most frank interview ever, the WSB racer who went on to win a TV popularity show about eating grubs and bits of a kangaroo, tells all about how and why he was like he was when he was racing.
I WON’T SAY I REGRET THINGS AS SUCH, BUT LOOKING BACK NOW I DIDN’T NEED TO BE THAT MEAN, OR SAY THE THINGS I DID
“Looking back now, I didn’t need to be as selfish, as outspoken and arrogant as I once was: I realise now that I created a monster!” Carl Fogarty: four-time World Superbike champion, three-time Isle of Man TT winner (and former lap record holder), 1992 World Endurance champ and 2014 King of the Jungle, is in reflective mood: “When I look back now at my time at the top, I realise I was pretty mean. I shouldn’t and I won’t say I regret things as such, but looking back now I didn’t need to be that mean, or say the things I did, I could have just won races. I didn’t need to say ‘he’s shit’ as that would and did put more pressure on myself, but then – when I said these things – they came out true, most times. “Why did I put myself through that? I guess I didn’t want anyone getting near me on or off the track. That’s why I had to think that no one else had a right to be on the same track as me. Maybe my head was gone? I would say the bike was shit, or the tyres were crap and only in the wet would I say it was down to me... I just said it, and I didn’t need to say it. I would say the truth though… if it was down to the tyres, I’d say it, when perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I guess straight talking and honesty did help me get such a massive following I suppose.” The truth: no one can say Foggy ever said anything other than
the truth. And I should know. I spent lots of time following Carl Fogarty during – perhaps – his hardest year in World Superbikes: 1996 when he rode the recalcitrant Castrol Honda RC45. I was working for the weekly newspaper as WSB reporter and whenever we printed his (often) very forthright views I’d worry what he thought when he actually saw it in print. To his credit, Carl, unlike many other top riders of the day, would be fine with seeing what he said in the paper, while others would (with the benefit of hindsight ) often deny saying it. Carl was one of my heroes, but, how can I say this, he could be a prickly character but he’s since mellowed. ‘Racing’ Foggy and ‘King of the Jungle’ Foggy are similar people but Jungle Carl seems more relaxed and happier in his skin. Rumour is that a good friend passed away some years back and that this had a profound effect on Carl. I always found Foggy funny and – on his day – as quick-witted as James Whitham himself, but if you ran into him on an ‘off’ day, you’d get the laser-eye treatment and scuttle off out of the way. It is different now: Carl seems so much more of a laid-back bloke and not so much like a wound-up spring. He’s still engaging company… but without that hard edge. And what about that ‘old’ hard, cruel edge, like naming pet pigs after his rivals? “Oh… well, that. It was nothing,” he laughs. “We had some pigs and someone asks what their names are… they didn’t have names so you just say you’ve called them after your rivals as a joke, just an off the cuff remark really. It was my friend Chris Herring who was working for MCN at the time and you do it for a laugh and it just takes off!” Of course – by the time of the notorious ‘pig-name-gate’ – Foggy was already a WSB legend and becoming a British sporting icon, but where did his love of World Superbikes stem from? This – after all – was the man many felt could have been a real 250cc twostroke GP contender, before a horrendous leg-break at Oulton Park in 1986 which he rebroke in 1987. Famously, dad George bought Carl a Honda RC30 apparently ‘because he could fit on it’ and from then on (even despite some high-profile 500cc twostroke outings) Foggy was known as a four-stroke man from then after, sealing three F1-titles (1988-1990) but yearning to get into the up-and-coming series of the moment: the nascent World Superbike Championship. “Pretty much straight away I knew I wanted to get into WSB,” admits Carl. “I was doing TT-F1 at the time it debuted and I did one WSB race in 1989 and you could see it was going places. I knew then that – apart from GPS – it was the series you wanted to be in. TT-F1 wasn’t the biggest as lots of top riders didn’t’ want to do it really (editor’s note – more than likely due to the dangerous nature of some of the tracks!) WSB was easier to get into than GPS, so that’s what I aimed for. I did some rounds when I was with Honda Britain in 1990, but they didn’t have much in the way of budget as it was being run by Neil Tuxworth who is notoriously tight! I ended up doing some rounds while winning my last F1 title, most with team-mate James Whitham. I think we did Jerez which wasn’t so good and Donington, where I got a 6th and 7th, which wasn’t bad at all.” (We checked Foggy, you got two 6th positions!) Of course, 1990 was the year where Foggy’s team-mate Whitham had a nightmare time with the RC30, mainly down to the amount of crashes he had on it. Foggy recalls: “That bike nearly finished James off completely, careerwise! The RC30 wasn’t the easiest bike on the short circuits. As said, we both did Jerez and Donington that year and I just did Brands Hatch thanks to the limited budget. When I crashed on it, it was all down to that front-end. “For 1991 I did three-quarters of a season as I’d won TT-F1 the previous year, so Honda promised a proper HRC bike for me and Fred Merkel. At the end of that season Fred was 8th overall and I was 7th on uncompetitive bikes. That made me realise I could beat these guys if I had a Kawasaki or a Ducati. People would say ‘yeah, whatever’ but we were even struggling in the UK on the RC30 then as it wasn’t the best handling bike and it was one of the slowest bikes out there by then. The end result of 1991 was that I
couldn’t get a ride for the following year…” It’s now part of Foggy folklore, but 1992 was Carl’s ‘one step back, to go two steps forward’ kinda season. He did a notable British GP 500cc wild-card, where he slid off on engine coolant while in 5th position, he became World Endurance Champion with Terry Rymer, took the Isle of Man TT lap record of 123.61mph on an unfancied Loctite Yamaha OW-01 (a record which lasted for seven years) and took the overall win at Macau with a 1st and 3rd position on a twostroke 500cc Yamaha. Most importantly, he battled on as a privateer in WSB, thanks to him buying his own Ducati… He says: “The Ducati was the best thing you could buy over the counter and when I won second race at Donington, people realised I was telling the truth about what I could do with the right equipment. I knew I was fast but needed the right package: I knew how good I was, but until then it had been really hard to show that. People suddenly realised I wasn’t actually full of shite…” Although there were still the classic Foggy
WHEN I WON SECOND RACE AT DONINGTON, PEOPLE REALISED I WAS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT I COULD DO
quotes when the likes of Trevor Nation questioned how ‘standard’ Carl’s 888 Corsa was. The story goes that the Oxford Products Ducati 888 that Trev (and later Jeremy Mcwilliams) would ride in the 1992 British series was bought at the same time as Carl and dad George picked up his from Bologna. In a magazine interview Foggy said his bike was just well put together, while Nation would say that – if the bike was as standard as Carl said it was, he must be Superman. Foggy simply said: “Just tell Nation that my bloody cape is in the back of the van…” The rest is history: battling with Scott Russell for the 1993 title but losing out (despite more wins than the American) to scooping the first of four titles in 1994 and dominating in a time of WSB greats, such as Aaron Slight, John Kocinski, Simon Crafar, Pier-francesco Chili, Neil Hodgson, Colin Edwards, Troy Corser and Anthony Gobert. Carl recalls: “Over the years I grew and the championship grew and it rivalled GPS back in the 1990s. We were even sometimes faster than the GP boys at some tracks, so to be part of this ‘golden era’ of World Superbikes makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck today when I think about it. “Everything came together at the right time: including the amazing TV coverage from Sky. It was the world’s biggest and best four-stroke championship, like Motogp is now. The bikes were special: they were pretty much all factory bikes like Motogp bikes are in some ways. We had carbon brakes and the bikes and teams had lots of money thrown at them. We had big characters, too. The proof of this is if you look at Motogp now: many of the team bosses or staff originally came from World Superbikes from the 1990s: think of Suzuki’s Davide Brivio or my old boss Davide Tardozzi. To be part of it was amazing and maybe we didn’t appreciate it at the time.” So let’s talk about the rivals and the bikes then, Carl. “My main rival changed every year: one year it was Scott Russell, the next Troy Corser, or Aaron Slight, then Colin Edwards. The toughest – if I’m honest – was also probably the most talented and that would be John Kocinski. When we fought for the 1997 title I was well over the limit all the time trying to get the best out of that Ducati and seeing the lead slip away with him on the much faster Honda. I hated him at the time, but we mellow as we get older! He was so talented and a 250cc title winner and 500cc GP race winner and one of the fastest guys on the planet on his day. It was my fault and responsibility that I over-rode the bike that year and fair play to him for winning the title.” So what bikes stick in the mind then?
Perhaps we should start with that ‘difficult’ RC45, Carl? “The RC45 wasn’t a bad bike,” he replies, “It was probably the fastest bike out there, but it didn’t suit me, it suited Aaron. It was one of those bikes you had to go ‘hard-in and hard-out’ of corners on. I was all lean angles, me… On some circuits you just couldn’t do that on the Honda and the rear-end of the bike would just come around on you. But still, we did win at Hockenheim, Monza and did the first ever same-rider double at Assen. Then we went to Albacete and it was a nightmare and I wouldn’t do better than a 5th and a 7th. It was hard to get the Honda to work at some tracks and doubtless some of that was down to me. It wasn’t really very consistent, while in comparison, previously the Ducati had worked well almost everywhere. “Here’s another admission: I think in that year I wasn’t very ‘fired up’ for it. I never felt that ‘wanted’ by Honda and I lost a bit of my motivation that year and was more bothered about going back to Ducati for 1997. Honda also seemed to make it clear that they put more priority into GP racing and even the Suzuka Eight-hour over World Superbikes. It could have been a disastrous year on the RC45 but in the end it was just a bit disappointing. “If I had my time there again, perhaps I’d do things differently. My regret is that perhaps I should have gotten fitter and made myself more motivated or spent more time with the team to try and make things work, but we still took 4th in the title race. Also it’s down to circumstance and who is in the team. I remember being fired-up for the fight in 1997 on returning to Ducati and then a little demotivated in 1998, but team boss Davide Tardozzi kicked me up the arse, so there was my motivation!” As if riding a blood-red, stunning Ducati V-twin wasn’t motivation enough? “I still remember the first time I saw the 916,” says Carl. ‘I literally thought ‘f****** hell! This thing is too beautiful to ride: what if I drop it?’ It was a Ferrari on two-wheels. Just an amazing piece of art and machinery and so far ahead of its time: a real classic. But… when I first took it out on track it wasn’t as easy to ride as the old 888. Instead it was nervous and twitchy. So, we made the thing longer, with a longer swingarm and then we kicked out the front to make it suit my style of riding. “This came about at a Mugello test where I was going round all day doing 1m 57s laps, the same times I was doing on the old 888 and I was convinced I couldn’t go any faster. Ducati then wheeled out a development bike from the workshop with a different steering head angle and different swingarm. Suddenly I’m into the 55s consistently. I told the team that I wanted that bike for the next race in Austria, where I won both races. That year we also had issues with the valves on some motors – and because the Italians close the factory for a month in summer – changes didn’t happen immediately! I was leading the race in Indonesia when my bike dropped a valve and James Whitham won by default (laughs) He hates me reminding him of that…” The record books show that Jonathan Rea has overtaken Carl as king of WSB and he’s been gracious as the Northern Irishman gradually outdid him, but he can rest easy in the knowledge that many feel he dominated during the series’ golden age, when giants rode in WSB: but which title was the sweeter? “I’ve got to say the first one is best. For a number of reasons though, I would probably also say the first title and the third were the hardest to win, as I was on the other side of the world and both had been difficult seasons: (Foggy won the first title at Phillip
I THINK IN THAT YEAR I WASN’T VERY ‘FIRED UP’ FOR IT. I NEVER FELT THAT ‘WANTED’ BY HONDA AND I LOST MOTIVATION
Island, Australia in 1994 and his third title in 1998 at Sugo in Japan.) I look back now and think I should have won in 1993, but despite 11 race wins to Scott’s five, but I had no consistency and perhaps lacked experience as a factory rider, so it was great to put things right in that last race of 1994 and make the title mine. In comparison I felt that the 1995 and 1999 titles were easy. In 1998 we struggled all year, but were in a position to win it at that final round in Japan.” 1995 and 1999’s titles were easy, Carl? Only someone who would happily wolf down an Ostrich anus and a Camel’s penis would say that.