Guy Martin Page 14

  CHAPTER 10

  TWO STEPS FORWARDS, ONE STEP BACKWARDS

  ‘Race fans at the roadside poured beer and bottles of water over it to put out the flames. I wouldn’t have been bothered if they’d let it burn.’

  I SIGNED TO stay with Shaun’s SMR team for 2008. I would race Hondas again, but this year would be sponsored by a new and short-lived website, Bike Animal.

  All the Honda teams would be racing the brand-new Fireblade Superbike. As often happened with new models, the standard road bikes that needed to be converted into race bikes were delivered to the teams later than anyone expected, so plans for pre-season testing were scuppered. I had ridden the bike before many other people in the world, though, because I attended the launch for Performance Bikes magazine, out at the Doha track in Qatar.

  I still had a broken wrist, but I could ride on track and it gave me the chance to quiz the lead designer to death.

  Shaun and I both suspected that racing on the short circuits would make me sharper for the roads, the races I really wanted to win. So we committed to do a full season of British Superbikes, or at least all the races that didn’t clash with the big road races I was already committed to.

  My team-mate was James Ellison. He had raced MotoGP and won a World Endurance Championship. Lovely lad. Clean. Very clean. Shaved his armpits. I think he shaved everything. Not a skerrick of hair on him from what I could see. He would concentrate solely on BSB, not competing in any road races, though he would come to the TT as a spectator to support the team.

  A complication with the 2008 Fireblade, as far as I was concerned, was a new design of Showa ‘Big Piston’ forks (BPFs) that we ran, that I just couldn’t get on with. I’ve never claimed to be the fastest short circuit rider, but I know what I know. If I know the bike isn’t right, then it’s not right. With these forks fitted, in fast corners where you’d go through on a closed throttle, neither braking nor accelerating, the bike would chatter like hell, a big vibration running through the whole bike, a resonation coming from the wheels up. It’s something a lot of riders complain about and it plagues some bikes in MotoGP.

  I struggled in testing at Thruxton, the first BSB round, qualifying something like twenty-fifth, and told Shaun we were wasting our time. I wanted to try the previous year’s forks. My 2007 TT bike was still in the team’s hospitality unit as a showpiece, but Shaun had previously told me I had to persevere with the BPFs, because they’d be better when we got them right. At tests earlier in the year I had pleaded with the team to let me try the old ones just as a comparison, because I couldn’t get on with the feel of them. When I was so far back on the grid, and had made a right dick of myself, I told them I might as well bugger off home, because I was wasting everyone’s time, petrol and tyres for eff-all. Shaun eventually backed down, told the mechanics to get the bike out of the hospitality unit and fit the previous year’s forks, and I ended up coming ninth in the second BSB race. No one said anything after that. I didn’t need anyone to say anything.

  For 2008, the mechanics were my younger sister, Kate, and ‘GP’ James, with Wozza over them and Shanley overseeing both my and Ellison’s team of mechanics. GP James had worked for Kenny Roberts’s team in MotoGP, hence his nickname. He was shit-hot, but he had a very particular way of doing things. After every meeting he wanted to strip the bike right down to the nuts and bolts, with the engine out, like they did in GPs. My thinking was, if the bike was running well and not in need of a scheduled rebuild, you’d clean the flies off it, change the oil and filter, give it a once-over and that would be it. GP James thought differently, because of his experience, so I just let him get on with it.

  At the second race of 2008, a British Superbike round at Oulton Park, the throttle twistgrip came loose, and nearly slid off the end of the handlebar, going into Island Bends. That was enough for me to have doubts about GP James, or more accurately, his method of working, for the rest of the season. We never argued, you couldn’t get angry with GP James, he’s such a nice fella, but it was in the back of my mind. Looking back, I should have just realised shit happens and put it out of my head, but so much of racing is in the mind that it became a distraction. He was a good mechanic and perhaps I was harsh on him.

  I was getting loads of time on the bike that season. It’s the thing that reminds me I’ve contradicted myself in later years, when I’ve been only racing the roads and saying that I’ve had enough time on the bike. In 2008 I was doing a full season of BSB and I feel I was riding at my best then, when I was on the bike nearly every week.

  I went to the North West 200 and led both big races. In the first I ran out of brakes, because there was no more adjustment in the lever, and I came second to Michael Rutter.

  I like the front brake lever set fairly near to the bar, but sometimes, as the brakes get hot, the lever moves more and then it’s reaching the handlebar grip before the brakes are fully on. So I always wanted a big adjuster that made it easy to move the lever out at 190 mph on the straight, the only chance you get to do it. My dad made one that worked perfectly, but because it looked a bit old-fashioned and agricultural, the team wouldn’t fit it. Shanley overruled GP James and my sister and wouldn’t let them fit it. Would I have won if I could’ve adjusted my brake? I don’t know, but it certainly didn’t help me.

  They let me put the big brake adjuster on for the second Superbike race, but another part – one that I’d asked to have changed, unsuccessfully – failed when I was leading by a fair bit. During the race, that I was comfortably leading, the temperature gauge went up and up and a red warning light came on. Dodgy sensor, I thought – ignore it, we’ll be fine, keep on trucking. Then the engine went off song and it was cooked. I was leading by five or six seconds, fit for winning, and one of the hose clips I’d asked them to change had broken and a radiator hose came off halfway through the race.

  Later that day I had a massive crash in the 600 race. I was pissed off about the breakdown robbing me of a good win, something I thought was avoidable because I’d always asked for my bike to be fitted with the kind of hose clips we used on trucks, but Shanley wouldn’t have it. He didn’t want anything as simple as that on the bike, so we had these fancy hoses and hose clips, and one of them failed.

  That year the Honda 600 was slow compared to the opposition, but I was trying like hell to make the best of a bad job, trying to win, or at least salvage a decent result, even though our CBR600 wasn’t really good enough. I was trying my nuts off, and it all ended in tears.

  I was going into Black Bridge, an over-the-crest left-hander, taken at over 100 mph. I tipped in and caught the kerb on the inside with either my leg or a footpeg. That was enough to take the weight off the front tyre, causing it to lose all its grip. We slid across the road, me and the bike, and hit the kerb on the other side of the road. The bike flew 20 feet in the air and I belted the kerb with the bottom of my back, really battering myself. I was so sore I couldn’t drive, so my friend Paddy drove me home. I was living with Kate on the farm and she told me she’d hidden the door key on the wheel of a car and to let myself in. Paddy dropped me off at 4am on the Sunday morning, the pair of us having driven and caught the ferry back straight after the Saturday race. It took me all the effort in the world to bend down and get the keys off the top of the car wheel. I was cursing, knowing the TT was only a week or so later. I hadn’t broken anything. I just had to grit my teeth and go back to work.

  That North West Supersport race was one of the rare times I was trying to make things happen, trying to get a result when everything wasn’t quite right. Still, I walked away from it.

  That was the weekend Robert Dunlop died after his bike seized during practice for the same meeting. I knew Robert a bit and got on well with him, but I’d seen plenty of racers get killed and he was another one on the list. Shit happens. It was that weekend that a lot of people really noticed Robert’s youngest son, Michael, for the first time. He was on track when his dad died on the Thursday evening. We never used to ride on the F
riday at the North West, so the very next time Michael rode a bike in anger was the Saturday morning, in the 250-cc race.

  I wasn’t entered in that race, but while I was waiting to go out in the next one I looked up at the big screen as it showed Michael sat on the grid. I knew, as soon as I saw him, that he was either going to win that race or bin it trying. He won, and that race was the making of him. Up until then he wasn’t really a go-er. He was still on his way up, but this was a turning point for him. From that moment on he was fast. He chucked his balls to the wall on that 250 and realised how hard he could ride and get away with it. Ever since then he’s been doing the business.

  I left Northern Ireland injured, but knowing I had the speed to do well at the TT. The BSB had been doing me some good. I would’ve won at the North West if it wasn’t for the hose clip. So I went to the TT full of confidence, but still sore. The big crash at the North West was only a week before.

  During practice week, I visited the hyperbaric chamber, near Quarterbridge. It’s a pressure chamber that is pumped full of 100 per cent oxygen. These can be used to cure and relieve all sorts of ailments, but racers use them to try to speed up healing after accidents. More oxygen is in the bloodstream and delivered to the injured area, which is what the break needs. There were certainly other racers in there. I don’t know if it works, but it didn’t do any harm. I’d go in and sit for an hour, reading a bike magazine or something, while my ears popped with the change in pressure.

  Other than that, practice week on the Isle of Man went without any bother. The first race of the TT couldn’t have started better. I was leading the six-lap Superbike race by 20 seconds from Cameron Donald on the TAS Suzuki. McGuinness seemed to be struggling with the Showa BPF forks, then he broke down. After that my Fireblade’s crank snapped. That was no one’s fault, except Honda’s.

  I got a third in the Superstock, then suffered an engine failure in the Junior Supersport 600. The next race was the second Supersport 600, but I wasn’t confident. Our 600 couldn’t pull your foreskin back that year, and I came in sixth.

  Before I knew it, it was Friday, Senior day, and the last TT for another year. I’d rebuilt the bottom end of the engine, then handed it over to the team to finish off and fit back into the bike. When the crank broke, the detached end had rattled about in the generator cover and damaged the generator, so the team replaced it.

  I went for the one lap of practice, on the Wednesday before Friday’s Senior race, but I took it easy because I was running in the new engine. It was slow through the speed traps, but I wasn’t worried. Friday’s race started and I was nowhere from the very beginning, even though I’d led the first Superbike race by 20 seconds. The bike got slower and slower over the first two laps of the six-lap race. When I came to leave the pit-lane after the first pit-stop, at the end of the second lap, the bike wouldn’t even start. The battery was flat. It turned out the broken crank had shorted the regulator out and the battery wasn’t being charged. My feeling was the team should’ve checked it.

  Back in British Superbikes things weren’t any better. I was in the top ten at the first race of the year, but before the end of the season I went back over my results, both on the roads and in BSB, and tallied up: 11 breakdowns out of 19 starts.

  Crank sensors went, cam sensors went, stuff fell off the bike. My team-mate, Ellison, had more than his fair share of breakdowns too, but his came in practice, while I was cursed with race DNFs.

  The experience turned me against BSB and short circuit racing for years. Perhaps I was wrong, but I didn’t think it was helping me prepare for the big road races. It was because the season was so disrupted. Without so many breakdowns perhaps I would have been more committed to that way of doing things.

  Towards the end of the season, I was really struggling with chatter at Croft, saying to Shanley, can’t we try something? I was suggesting taking a couple of bolts out of the bottom yoke to allow the forks to flex more, and slackening the engine mounts a bit, but Shanley always just said it was designed to be run as they had fitted it, so they wouldn’t change it. I managed to convince GP James to take a couple of bolts out of the bottom yoke, and it let me go half a second per lap quicker before the chatter came back. I returned to the pits and told James it was definitely doing some good and got him to slacken the 12-mm bolts that fastened the front of the engine into the frame. That change let me go quicker again. It proved that I knew what I knew. I still wasn’t winning BSB races, but I was going in the right direction.

  The highlight of 2008 was finally winning every race, except the last one, at the Southern 100. I would’ve won that too, if hadn’t got a puncture. I won the Scarborough Gold Cup, too.

  I’d spoken to Philip Neill of TAS Suzuki, but not seriously, and it wasn’t going to come to anything. I’d had a shit TT in 2008, but the potential was there. We’d led races by miles, but I felt the team wasn’t doing the job I needed from them and Shanley and I just couldn’t see eye-to-eye.

  Going into 2009, Shaun agreed to give me two of the bikes to prepare with mechanics of my own choice. It would be like my own team under their banner, but SMR would look after the 600 because it had a fancy Pectel ignition system on it.

  We agreed on the plan. Cameron ‘Cammy’ Whitworth, a mechanic I’d worked with at AIM Yamaha in 2006, would come on board. So would my old mate Johnny Ellis. On paper, the most important member of the team was Buckle, who’d been my mechanic in my first year with SMR. He would be in charge of building the Superbike and Superstock 1000, bikes we were going to take on the world with. It seemed to all be sorted till Buckle sent me a text message to say he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the pressure. From that moment on, even though I didn’t realise it at the time, we were buggered. Not because Buckle was the best bike builder in the world, but because the pressure he couldn’t cope with had just landed on me.

  At the last minute Shaun sorted out a new mechanic, a Yorkshireman called Danny Horne. He had been working for the Parkalgar team, but he fell out with the boss there, an ex-racer called Simon Buckmaster who I would have my own disagreements with the following year. Danny is a bit of a poseur, a pretty boy, who likes his sunglasses and hair gel, but we got on like a house on fire.

  I don’t feel I set the world alight at the 2009 TT. It was a poor TT by the standards I was setting myself. Because I had to prepare the bike, I was running around at the last minute to get hold of everything I needed to get the Superbike built, commissioning Spondon Engineering in Derbyshire to make a special swinging arm and then Mehew to do the engine. I’d learnt about this Fireblade and I knew it was fast. Against the advice of SMR, I ordered some specific cams to give it even more power.

  I set the way the team would work at the TT. Cammy, Jonny, Danny, Kate and I all stayed in a house in Douglas that Kate had sorted out for us, but we did all our preparation well out of the way in a friend’s garage. Danny remembers it just like I do, in that we all worked together well and had the best craic at a race any of us would ever experience. We’d be up working at six in the morning, music going, then come down to the paddock, get the bikes scrutineered, then go back to the house and chill out.

  When it came to racing, I was third in the six-lap Superbike, behind McGuinness and Plater, one place ahead of Hutchinson; and second in the Superstock, less than ten seconds back from Hutchinson and eight ahead of Keith Amor. Then I was second in the Supersport, to Hutchie, just six seconds back in the shorter 72-minute, four-lap race, edging out Keith Amor again. At that point of the week, although I’d had no wins I was the only rider to be on the podium three times, but that year’s TT was about to go bad for me.

  I had a DNF in the second Supersport when the engine blew; then the chain broke in the Senior when I was somewhere on the podium, but not realistically on for the win. I’ve always reckoned it was a fault with the chain, while the chain manufacturers said it was the way we’d fitted it. Whatever it was, I’d shown racing-winning potential without bringing home a win. It still wasn�
�t enough.

  I went to my favourite meeting of the year, the Southern 100, and my Honda 600 threw a con-rod, splitting the case and letting oil spill onto the exhaust, setting the bike on fire. Race fans at the roadside poured beer and bottles of water over it to put out the flames. After the TT race failure I’d had with the bike I wouldn’t have been bothered if they’d let it burn. SMR were building that bike in-house, while I was looking after the Superbike and Superstock. Mehew’s stepson was building the engine. It broke down or blew its head gasket regularly all year.

  Even though it was my job to prepare the Superbike, after the TT it had gone back to SMR’s headquarters for some reason. I collected it for the Southern 100, and when I got it back on it, it felt slow. I said to Shanley that it felt less powerful, and he reminded me it had raced at the North West 200 and all the TT. I could see what he was saying. Perhaps it had become a bit blunt and needed a freshen-up. I won the big race on it, but I had to ride it hard.

  After the Southern 100 I took the Superbike home to prepare it to go on show at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

  When I took the engine to bits to check it and discover what wear it had suffered, I noticed someone had taken the cams out of it, the ones I’d dug my heels in to have and the team didn’t want me to use. These HRC cams made big power, and while they weren’t user-friendly, they were good for the TT. SMR had seen how well they worked and had nicked them to put them in my team-mate Karl Harris’s bike for Snetterton! I wasn’t bothered that they’d taken them, the team had bought them after all, but I felt they hadn’t been straight with me. I told Shaun, and he didn’t know his mechanics had done it.

  Mick Shanley is a very good mechanic and crew chief, he’s proved it with great results, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye. He wasn’t used to working with a rider like me and didn’t seem to want to give way to me. From my side of things, I wanted to make some decisions about the bike I was racing that he disagreed with. It happens.