The Armstrong deal aside, another big bonus for me in 1983 was winning the Pro-Am World Cup race at Donington which was shown on TV. It was weird because I was racing with Alan Carter again and he waved me through as a joke because he must have thought he would just come straight past me at the next corner. He didn’t and I won the race, so it was a bit daft of him but that was Alan all over. I suppose he was just messing about but I was pretty serious and I certainly wasn’t going to pass up the chance of winning a World Cup race on live TV.
I also rode in my first race abroad in 1983 in another Pro-Am World Cup meeting at Hockenheim in Germany and came fourth which I was quite happy with. All in all, it had been a pretty good year as I ended up with second place in the Pro-Am Championship and I had enjoyed occasional success on the Armstrong in the 250cc class although the bike broke down too often to allow me to have any consistent results. I won some races in Scotland on the Armstrong and had a win at Knockhill and a fourth at Donington on a 350cc Armstrong that the factory had built for me. But the most important development of the year for me was that I had become a professional racer and for the first time I could spend all week concentrating on the race ahead instead of having to go to work. Having said that, I actually went back to work at a plant hire company called Dundaff Draining along with my mate Wullie McKay during the winter because it was some extra cash in my pocket and I had too much spare time on my hands. I’ve always liked working anyway, just because it’s a good laugh if you’ve got the right sort of mates around you and I don’t like being idle.
Armstrong had committed to backing me for a full season’s racing in 1984 rather than having me just as a development rider-come-racer. I knew they were serious about winning the British championship so things were looking better than they had ever done for me at the end of a season. For me, Armstrong was the team to ride for at that point because they had their own factory right here in Britain, they built their own bikes, and they could respond quickly to any changes I wanted made. I didn’t even look anywhere else for the 1984 season, not least because I suspected Armstrong would provide my route into Grand Prix racing which was where I really wanted to be.
Also, I was going to be the sole UK-based factory rider for Armstrong in ‘84. Tony Head, who had recovered from his Donington crash which gave me my big break, was given bikes to run in his own private team rather than being the factory’s official rider.
The other exciting thing about Armstrong at that time was that they had built a carbon-fibre-framed bike that I had tested in the second half of 1983 and would race in 1984. It was going to be the first bike of its kind to be raced and I was very much looking forward to it. In fact, that bike was largely the reason why Armstrong landed government funding to go racing in the first place. The British government had provided a grant to develop carbon-fibre-framed bikes and the big carrot for them was that Armstrong said they were going to build an all-British 500cc Grand Prix racer. With Barry Sheene still making headline news in those days, there was a lot of support for the idea of a unique British bike that could take on the world so it was a shame it never really happened. I’ll explain why a little later.
My salary for 1984 was increased to £6000 and on top of that I got prize money and bonuses for winning as well as any personal sponsorship which I could sort out but there wasn’t much of that about back then, just a few quid here and there for wearing helmets and leathers.
Still, the new season was going to be another big step forward and as it turned out, my fourth year of racing would see me ride in my first ever Grand Prix. My dreams were coming true at last.
CHAPTER FOUR Stealing Tomatoes
The aim for 1984 was to win the 250cc British title on the 250 Armstrong with the Austrian Rotax engine and to win the 350cc British championship on the 350 machine that housed Armstrong’s own in-line twin cylinder engine.
The downside of those commitments was that I would have to give up racing my beloved RD350LC that I had raced since the beginning of my career. I didn’t mind too much as the Pro-Am series had achieved its purpose as far as I was concerned, by getting my name known, and it was on the slide anyway. It had run its course, but the extra prize money would have been useful because it had become pretty easy money for me. It was great fun too but I needed to be more out of my depth again if I was to keep improving my riding and I knew I still had a long way to go in that department. Because Armstrong paid me £6000 for the ‘84 season I stopped working in the winter to supplement my racing – and I haven’t had a proper job since!
As well as contesting the British championships in 1984, I also took part in my first ever road race at the North West 200 in Northern Ireland. The organisers approached me about racing there and I had a spare weekend in the calendar so I thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t know much about the course but I’d heard that it wasn’t as dangerous as some of the other pure roads circuits even though the lap record averaged around 115mph. It’s mostly long straights and slow corners which isn’t as bad as having lots of fast corners lined with trees.
Although I enjoyed the NW200, I was never interested in doing the Isle of Man TT. I thought it was a great event but it just didn’t appeal to me as a rider. It’s not because it was dangerous because at that point in my career I honestly didn’t care about getting hurt – I never thought it would happen to me. It’s just that I wanted to get into GPs and I knew the TT wasn’t the way to go about it.
But the North West was great fun, or at least it was once the racing began as I almost spent the whole weekend in a police cell! I was walking down the street in Portrush when 1 spotted the guys from Dunlop tyres through the glass front of a restaurant. Instinctively, I dropped my trousers and pants and gave the boys a big moonie and then the whole world went dark. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but it turns out that the local Royal Ulster Constabulary police saw me mooning, threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into the back of a police car. I thought it was the Ku-Klux-Klan or something, until I got to the station. Eventually, the Dunlop boys came down (after wetting themselves laughing) and vouched for my character so I was released in time for the races.
I remember being really bored in practice because there was too much time to think on those long straights. It was getting tedious just holding the throttle to the stop and going in a straight line. But apart from being boring, it also gave me too much time to think about things that could go wrong. What would happen if the gearbox seized? What would happen if the engine seized and I couldn’t get the clutch in? I was thinking about all that sort of stuff in practice but the actual races were great fun, slipstreaming all the other riders for miles, flat out. I treated the course like a big, short circuit because I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know how you were supposed to ride a pure road race properly and I suppose I still don’t but I did all right, finishing second to Kevin Mitchell in the wet 350cc race then coming home fifth in the dry 250cc event. I had been in second place and was dicing with Steve Cull but landed in a hedge on the last lap and remounted for fifth.
But the best thing about the North West was the atmosphere. We practised in the evenings then we all went out and got drunk and slept in late in the mornings. It was brilliant and the Irish hospitality and the fans were just fantastic; everybody bought me drinks from the moment I arrived!
I got to know the king of all road racers, Joey Dunlop, that year too but it was at Snetterton and not at the North West. He was riding Honda’s new RS250 and we had a great battle until I fell on the last lap. Our paths didn’t cross very often but I had a few pints with him over the years and I think we had a mutual respect for each other. I certainly had huge respect for him.
It may have been