It must have worked. Of hundreds who responded, I made the first cut of 20. I couldn’t believe it. I was still in two minds at that stage, keeping my eyes and ears open for any possible options to continue with motocross, but I couldn’t help getting a bit excited about being shortlisted. In his practical way, Dad reminded me there was a way to go yet.
We were invited to Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire for a selection day to whittle those 20 down to five. There was only one problem: I’d never ridden a road bike in my life.
This was when Dad’s experience and contacts list came in handy. He made some calls, one to an old TT rival and former Grand Prix rider, Ron Haslam. A couple of weeks later, we were on our way to a race school Ron still runs at Donington Park, to ride a Honda CB500 naked road bike. I was wearing my dad’s old leathers about five sizes too big, boots a size too small and gloves which fitted. Thanks to Wendy Hearn, an old contact of Dad’s who worked for Arai, I also had a shiny new helmet. I’ve worn Arai ever since.
I’d never been to any kind of racing activity with a kitbag on an airplane before, it was always me and Dad out of the back of the van. But on this trip, me and Dad rocked up at East Midlands airport and stayed in the Holiday Inn Express there – it all felt quite professional. Ron and his wife Ann came to pick us up and take us to a briefing, because it was my first track session. Ron was a bit of a British racing legend and GP hero from the 1970s and 80s, so I felt very special being taken under his wing for some one-to-one coaching sessions.
Ron looked after me really well, and maybe there was a bit of special treatment through knowing my dad. After a few laps, he said, ‘You need to be a lot less rigid on the bike. Forget your upright motocross riding style. Move your inside bum cheek off the seat and lean into the corner with the bike.’ For ten years, I’d been kind of pushing the bike down into corners and almost pivoting from the middle of the seat, so I told him how alien it felt. But he was calm and reassuring and said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s normal for circuit rookies to be a bit scared at first of leaning your body so much into corners.’
In the middle of the day, Ron said, ‘Come on, I’ll give you an idea of what I mean.’ He got me on the pillion seat of one of the school’s Honda Fireblades and took me around for a few laps. He showed me what he meant about moving around on the bike and did a one-handed wheelie down the start-finish straight with me on the back.
I also remember the best piece of advice Dad gave me – which was to make sure to do all your braking in a straight line because, as you release the brake and lean the bike into the corner, the contact patch of the tyre changes. Even now, I still use a fine balance of different braking techniques, trying to get it right for each corner.
When you’re riding on tarmac, pretty much all your braking is done with the front brake, whereas in motocross you don’t use the front so much and, if anything, the rear is more dominant. The thrill of the higher speeds was just amazing.
At the end of the day, Ron told me he thought I had loads of potential and to keep working at it. ‘Hang off the bike more,’ he said, ‘and you’ll be fine at the Rockingham test day.’
I was anxious all the same; I realised I was getting desperate to be picked. This was a really big deal – the kind of opportunity that wasn’t going to come my way with motocross.
When we got to Rockingham, it was the worst possible day to have to ride for your future career. It was damp and drizzly and the track surface started out patchy. Tyre choice was an absolute nightmare – at least it would have been if we’d actually had a choice! We had borrowed an old 125 from another contact of Dad’s, Alan Patterson, a GP rider back in the early 1990s. We had a set of slicks on the bike and a set of wets for extreme rainy conditions, both of which were pretty old and ropey.
I think the organisers took it all into account and knew that not everything we brought was going to be perfect even though, like in our motocross days, everything was clean and tidy and well presented. They came and had some chats during the day about my racing experience, ambitions and targets. I answered as politely as possible and tried to sound knowledgeable. We didn’t really have much of a clue about the carburation, which is vitally important on a 125, or suspension, and whether that had been set up for me or, more specifically, my weight, so we just put the tyre warmers on the bike.
Of the 20 guys at the test, I was the only complete rookie – the others had done at least a season of road racing at club or British championship level. I went out on slicks but, because it was damp, I took it quite steady in the first session.
To my great surprise, I was passing loads of other riders.
My confidence was growing as I remembered my day with Ron Haslam and all the advice he’d given me. I was realising it was working, that hanging off the bike and leaning into the corners allowed you go round the corners faster. And, as anyone who rides a bike will know, the faster you can go round a corner, the bigger the buzz.
I was probably still quite stiff on the bike, but all the levers and pedals were in the same place as on a motocross bike so it was a question of adjusting my balance on the little 125, tucking in behind the screen on the straights and sticking my knee out in the corners instead of extending a leg.
The track was beginning to dry out and I was building speed lap by lap as the dry line got bigger and wider, cutting my lap times not just by tenths of a second but by seconds and seconds. I was passing other riders, amazing myself at how natural everything felt and how quickly I was able to get into a rhythm, moving around on the bike like Ron had told me, using the brakes like my dad had told me and everything felt like it was coming together.
When I pulled in at the end of that first session, Dad was quite excited and started firing questions at me about the bike, but I was much more interested in his opinion of my performance. ‘How do you think I did?’ I kept pestering him.
He was his normal self and said, ‘Don’t worry about that, just tell me what the bike’s doing. Is it OK on the brakes? Where can we make some improvements?’ He changed the suspension a little bit to give me a slightly better feel for the damp conditions and we altered the gearing slightly as well. Then I went out for the second session and, with those changes to the bike, I was even faster.
One goal I had set myself was to get my knee down, which I hadn’t been able to do at Donington because the bikes were so big and the footpegs so low. It’s something you never do in motocross, which needs a completely different riding style, and it was why this experience was so alien to me. I’d seen heroes like Kevin Schwantz do it on TV so often and I knew it’s a way riders gauge how far over the bike is leaning in a corner. It’s a subconscious thing now, but I remember it being so important then, a little indication I could be a short-circuit racer.
It was probably like watching an elephant riding a bicycle, me at 70kg and 1.72m trying to find my way around a 125. But I got my knee down, scraping my virgin sliders as proof, and I loved it! It was satisfying to hit that little target, but it also told me how hard I was pushing and how close I was getting to the probable limits of grip.
I was beginning to think I had a real chance of making the cut and being one of the final five who the Red Bull Rookies team would take to Spain for a test.
Then I crashed.
Maybe I was getting a little too confident, but racing is all about finding the edge of performance and sometimes you have to go beyond the limit to find where the limit is. I was putting more and more lean angle into corners, but as I accelerated out of one left-hander, still banked over quite far, I went through a big damp patch. I’d seen it on previous laps but, as you carry more corner speed you run wider on corner exits and this time I couldn’t avoid it. As my front tyre touched the edge of the damp patch it lost traction, the handlebars folded to the left and I fell off the inside of