Best of British: John Hackett
The UK’s Mr Desmo and the man behind world-famous tuning firm JHP Racing
‘They are beautiful motors built with real passion’
‘Three days after my 16th birthday I was on the grid’
If you own a Ducati you will know the name John Hackett. One of the UK’s, if not the world’s, foremost experts on the Italian firm’s wares, John is the go-to man for desmo-powered bikes. His tuning firm JHP Racing has won domestic titles and his shop, Ducati Coventry, is one of the UK’s leading Ducati dealerships. And it all started with a neighbour. “My father and brothers were into bikes so motorcycles were always around, but it was a neighbour who was really to blame for me getting into bike racing,” says John. “The neighbour’s lad Ron Phillips (who later went on to form Fahron Engineering) was racing and his dad had a motorcycle shop, which I helped at on Saturdays. I loved the whole race scene and at the age of 13 I started to convert a BSA Bantam into a race bike.
“You couldn’t race until you were 16 so three days after my birthday, I was lining up on a grid at Perton circuit on the BSA - I finished third. Bitten by the bug but with no money, I built my own engines and soon others started to ask me to do theirs as well, meaning I was doing 40 hours a week working as a gas fitter and about 50 building motors!
“I stayed in the British scene but to be honest I never chased titles, I just raced for the love of it. In that era you would find superstars such as Ago, Sheene, Read and Granty in national races and I’ve battled against them all. I was still a gas fitter and my spare time was taken up racing and building motors. I did mainly two-strokes but also a few four-strokes and this is how it was until 1980, when I had a family and retired from racing.
“Ten years later a friend entered me into a one-off race at Silverstone on a Yamaha OW01. I hadn’t ridden for 10 years but I ended up winning the race and that was it, I was back! I raced the Yamaha in the British scene and did a few internationals at events such as Mettet – which wasn’t bad for a 40-year-old. Then something odd happened...
“One day I heard a neighbour having trouble starting a car, so I popped over to see if I could help. He had just bought a beautiful old Rolls-Royce in an auction but it wasn’t working so I had a look at the carb, spotted a broken needle and machined him up a new one. The chap was called David Lees and after that he came to a few races to watch me on the OW01. “David was a businessman and one day he came over and said ‘John, I’ve bought you a Duck-at-i.’ I said ‘a what?’ He replied ‘I don’t know, but apparently it’s the bike to be racing and your Yamaha is too
slow.’ He had bought me a Ducati 888 Corsa - my first ever Ducati. “The Ducati was incredible, so easy to ride fast, but the engine was still very early in its development and I spent a lot of time making it reliable. This was the early 1990s and Ducatis were just starting to become the bikes to race, however they were fragile and my bike was both fast and reliable, so anyone racing one started asking me to tune their engines - I was inundated. Which is when I got on a flight to Italy.
“I called the Ducati factory and spoke to Ivo Bertoni, who was the senior race department engineer. We met and that was the start of a very close relationship with the factory where we shared ideas and helped develop the race engines. “That is the joy of working with Ducati, it is like being part of a family. There is so much passion and everyone will go out of their way to help you, which is why such a small Italian factory has done so well against the mighty Japanese. “I still remember the first time I pulled a Ducati engine apart – it was a proper race thoroughbred. In comparison a Japanese inline four is so basic, it could be a domestic car’s motor, but a Ducati has desmo, is so slim and is full of incredible engineering – they are beautiful motors built with passion.”