I’m going quite quickly, I should probably think about braking now because I don’t really know my way around this place too well yet and turn one has something of a dangerous reputation. These were my thoughts as I rolled off the throttle in anticipation of stroking the front brake lever enough to make me feel nice and safe, get settled into the corner and power out the other side, safe and sound.
This was nearly 25 years ago, not long after I had finished national racing here in South Africa and so I was still respectably rapid. More than quick enough to embarrass the vast majority of the other Brit journalists who were on the launch with me, so I didn’t feel under any extra pressure to try harder – Superbike magazine’s honour would remain intact.
As these thoughts zipped through my mind, obviously a sign I wasn’t trying hard enough in itself, another of the Bimota SB8R’s on track with me roared up my inside. It was on the back wheel, and was so vertical it looked beyond the balance point, and the rider was standing up.
I had very much thrown the anchor out at this point, though I had no interest in searching out the corner entry point or even the apex, I was transfixed by the sight of this Bimota seemingly intent on wheelying straight into the gravel trap.
This was turn one at Misano, the gravel trap that had chewed up triple Grand Prix 500 world champion Wayne Rainey and spat him out a very different man. Back then the circuit ran the opposite way round to the direction you now witness when MotoGP visits, but either way the short straight is next to the pit wall.
A pit wall that at this moment had many Bimota technicians and designers and generally sharp-suited Italians watching the track action.
They weren’t watching me, they were pointing and laughing at the ridiculous talent on display as their new model dropped from near vertical wheelie into some seriously hard braking that threw the rear wheel sideways – intentionally no doubt – as the rider backed it into the turn and then left a fat darkie on his way to the next corner.
I missed my turn-in point, made a fleeting and embarrassingly vague connection with the apex and laughed out loud in my helmet. The Bimota entourage may have enjoyed it, but with the view I had of that spectacular bit of riding I had definitely enjoyed it even more.
The rider was a young Shane Byrne, probably better known to you as Shakey, a soon to be MotoGP and World Superbike racer and before he retired a multiple British Superbike champion. He’d just been picked up by Fast Bikes magazine as a tester on his non-racing days, and it was a genuine privilege to share the track with him that day.
Working for what I still (completely unbiasedly of course) consider to be the best sport bike magazine ever, in its heyday, as a road tester and then the road test editor, was a bucket list employment opportunity that I will always cherish. I worked with some truly talented people, met a lot of genuinely amazing personalities in the motorcycling world and rode just about every bike I ever wanted to, and a few that I didn’t.
With our hand-painted helmets, multiple personalised leathers, endless freebies, fat expense accounts and virtually continuous travels to the world’s best circuits it would have been easy for it all to go to my head and end up prancing around like some kind of pretend somebody. But having raced in South Africa I realised how average I was, how many very fast racers there were and that there would always be several somebodies to embarrass you to your core if you ever got the slightest bit boastful and started talking about how quick you thought you were.
Episodes like the Misano Bimota episode came along often enough to remind me to keep quiet, stay in the background, and if I happened to be one of the quicker riders then the riding would do the talking for me.
Australia’s Eastern Creek, again a turn one incident but this time with a Suzuki GSX-R 1000. I was beginning to learn the layout, gritting my teeth harder each lap as I braked later and turned more quickly, pleased that I was clearly getting smoother and faster each lap.
Towards the end of the day I felt good, I’d engineered myself a spot at the end of my group so I had riders to chase and overtake. I was having a whale of a time, I was beginning to believe my own hype when, knee barely skimming the deck because I didn’t want to create too much wind drag in a frightfully fast corner, neck straining against the turbulence, I knew I had now mastered Philip Island’s turn one. And then in my peripheral vision, on my outside no less, another Suzuki came zipping past. In the middle of the fakkin’ corner!
Bollocks to that I thought, who the bloody hell does he think he is? I’ll latch on and dive bomb the cheeky bastard a few corners later. Except it was me tying myself in knots a few turns on as I bounced through the grass trying to hang on to some twat who thought he was Neil Mackenzie or someone.
Except he was Neil Mackenzie, the same Scotsman who’d stood on a GP500 podium, who’d raced said 500 around this very circuit and then gone on to take three British Superbike titles.
I did however smash a shed-load more beers than him that evening in Sydney and made much more of a tit of myself than he ever could have, so there is that.
I’ve ‘followed’ (my version of the facts that actually involve being overtaken by) Kevin Schwantz, Jurgen Fuchs, Freddie Spencer, Colin Edwards, Troy Bayliss, Ruben Xaus, Tito Rabat, Jeremy McWilliams, Steve Plater and South Africans like Dave Petersen, Russell Wood, the MacLeod brothers, Hudson Kennaugh and many, many others on the international scene whom I have to admit to forgetting at this very moment – blame the local vino rosso where I’m writing this in my van just outside the city of Bologna.
I started this column with a firm idea of what I wanted to say, and why; but far too deep into this delightful box of red nectar I have lost the thread of my feeble line of reasoning, so I’ll just let the moral of the story be: don’t be a bigheaded tosser and brag about your speed, especially in the company of people you don’t know.
The chances are that there is at least one, but probably more people in your vicinity that are so much faster than you that you’ll be tempted to hang up your leathers for good once you’ve recovered from the shock of realising quite how pedestrian you really are.
Enjoy the experience of being blitzed by someone truly world class, learn a thing or two from them if you can, and if you are genuinely quick then let your riding be your calling card, not your mouth.
One of the things I noticed in nearly three decades of riding great tracks with awesome guest riders is that you never, ever hear any of them bragging about their speed the night before they hit the track.
The evening afterwards when dinner’s finished and they’ve sunk a few too many beers? Oh yeah, like any of us they like to tell a story or two, and when you’re a world class talent then such tales may be tall and involve incredible heroics on their part – but they’re true, so listen and appreciate and under no circumstances share your own exploits of racing glory from that time you nearly made the podium at Midvaal Raceway.
Mat Durrans
All the details in this story are obviously the fictional fever dreams of a failed bike journalist and are subject to an artistic super-license. Amen.
