by Guy Martin
But I went to the TT anyway …
If this had been a privateer Honda team, not the usual Honda set-up, I would have been begging to use the previous year’s bike, but there was no possibility of that with the official team. It would be more of a PR disaster.
Meanwhile, Honda Racing had asked a few lads to stand in for McGuinness on the factory Honda. This is what normally happens if a top team’s rider is injured before the TT and usually there isn’t a problem filling the seat. I heard the team asked Lee Johnston and Cameron Donald and they both turned them down. These lads, who were without rides for various reasons – Lee because he’d left his team, Cam because he’d retired – were turning down the chance of a factory Honda TT ride. What was that saying about the bike, its chances and its reputation in the paddock? Anyone who knew, knew what it had done to McGuinness, but I was still there.
I went to see McGuinness again on the Friday night before I caught the ferry to the Isle of Man. He lives just down the road from where I was getting the boat at Heysham. I wasn’t after any words of wisdom, or anything like that, I just wanted to see how he was. His leg was a right mess and he just reminded me I had nothing to prove, make sure you come home in one piece.
First practice was supposed to be Saturday, but it was cancelled because of low cloud. Sunday I tested the Mugen at Jurby. Monday there wasn’t any practice. I only did eight laps in practice, before the first race. Wilson Craig’s 600 was good, but I hadn’t had any time on it. Because of the weather we hardly had any practice time, and maybe I should have concentrated on getting that Supersport 600 right and making the best of a bad job, but I persevered with the Superbike instead, thinking it was the most important.
The TT races take place over two weeks. There are practice sessions every day of the first week, practice week, and race week starts on the middle Saturday, with the Superbike TT, weather permitting. It hardly needs saying I wasn’t full of confidence, but I was still going to give it my best. I set off from the start, and was just over seven miles into the first lap of a 227-mile race, going into Doran’s Bend, a fast left-hander you have to commit to if you’re going to get round it at racing speed. The lead up to it is fifth gear, on a Superbike, and even one that isn’t capable of race-winning pace, it’s still the thick end of 160mph, then you’re braking and going down the box to take the bend at about 110mph. I shifted down to the fourth and the bike went into a false neutral.
Going into this very fast-left-hander, like any corner, you use the bike’s engine braking to help you make the corner. If the bike jumps into neutral, there is no engine braking and the bike doesn’t behave like you want it to. It should be slowing as it engages a lower gear, but it’s coasting and feels like it’s accelerating. I’m still fighting it to turn, but it feels like it wants to go straight on while I’m trying to find a gear, pressing the gear lever, and nothing’s happening, so I commit to making the corner before I run out of road. I’m leant right over and run up the kerb, then run up the side of the wall and slide off the bike. Committing to the corner and not panicking saved my bacon. All that was on my mind was, Try to get round, try to get round. If I’d have panicked and gone straight on, I’d be brown bread.
I ended up on the inside of the bend, the bike on the kerb of the outside. I jumped to my feet and legged it off the road, because another bike, with Peter Hickman, was seconds behind me.
The cool head that had saved my skin on more than one occasion disappeared and as soon as I stood up I was shouting at the bike. It was destroyed but I was reminding it what it had done to John McGuinness and what it had tried to do to me. A second or so later I was trying to pick it up and onto the pavement, with the help of the marshals. From me losing the front to picking it up was 20 seconds.
Hitting a false neutral happens, and I’ve had them with Hondas before, but this wasn’t pilot error. In 2009 we had gearbox problems (when I was with Shaun Muir’s private Honda team). We had no spare parts, but the factory team brought one for us and Cammy, my mechanic, put it in. This was nothing to do with the problem that caused McGuinness’s crash; it was just one of those things, maybe a slightly worn part in the gearbox.
I hurt my wrist and it shook me up. If you saw the interviews that went out on the telly the same night you could see I wasn’t myself.
So that was the first race of three that the Fireblade SP2 could enter that TT. The next race was the Superstock 1000 race, followed by the big one, Senior. The SP2 can race in all three classes, but it’s a different specification for the Superstock race. The front suspension can be modified but not changed from the road bike spec that anyone can buy. The Superstocks have less sophisticated engine management systems than the Superbikes are allowed, but that’s less of a problem now, because the road bike systems the race bikes are based on are all-singing, all-dancing now anyway, with anti-wheelie, launch control and traction control as standard. The Superstocker is also a lower state of tune than the Superbike, meaning it’s less powerful, but Superstock BMWs can still easily break 200mph at the TT, on a two-way road that’s open to the public every day of the year.
I wasn’t really talking to Neil Tuxworth at this stage. There was no falling out, but my day-to-day points of contact were Jonny Twelvetrees and Roger Smith. Twelvetrees was introduced to the press as the Honda race team manager, Tuxworth’s replacement. Big shoes to fill. It seemed to me that Tuxworth was still watching everything that was going on, but he was definitely less hands on.
Jonny Twelvetrees is the older brother of the England rugby player, Billy, and had a very pragmatic approach to the motorbike job. Jonny is a nice bloke, perhaps too human for road racing. I think the experience of the TT and what’s at stake rattled him and he didn’t want anything to do with the place, because he knew what could happen. It’s sport, but lives are at risk.
There were times when other team managers would make it clear: We pay your wage, you get on it, and Twelvetrees didn’t want to say that. Tuxworth would. So, in a strange way, I had more respect for Tuxworth, because he was more businesslike. I’m not saying he’d send you to your death, but he explains things in a very rational way, that would make me think, Oh yeah, I should just get on and ride it. Not that anyone put me under pressure to ride it; the team were brilliant. Part of me thinks they should have just manned up and told me to get on with it. I was being a bit woolly about the job. I was thinking, It’s tried to kill my teammate, it’s just chucked me off, fuck that!
Then Honda race team’s management confirmed they were withdrawing the Superstock-spec Fireblade SP2, because of the question marks over the electronics, so I had even less time on the track. At that point I was still planning to race the Superbike-spec Fireblade SP2.
Andy Spellman was over for the whole two weeks and he couldn’t understand why I was still willing to race it. I make my own decisions, but he helps if he can, and sorts out stuff that I don’t want to get involved in, which is bloody handy sometimes. It wasn’t me not manning up to the job, but I was so close to the situation, maybe I couldn’t see it clearly. I don’t like letting people down and wouldn’t criticise the team that I needed to trust, I was there to do a job until someone told me I couldn’t. Spellman was going into meetings with Honda telling them that he believed Honda had a moral obligation not to put me on a bike they couldn’t guarantee was safe. He’s very knowledgeable about motorsport, but he was looking at it from a different point of view to TT people, and he certainly wasn’t alone.
I had Sharon and both the dogs with me. She wasn’t keen on me going back to racing, but she knew why I was and left it up to me. We stayed at my mate Gary’s near Ginger Hall and I love it there, but the atmosphere was tense in the Honda pit.
I appreciated that everyone was concerned about me and telling me why I shouldn’t get back on the bike, but I had my Tour Divide head on, the single-minded determination to get my head down and get on with it.
Everything was pointing to packing it in, not getting back on the bike, but
I saw that walking away would be the same as giving in and I don’t do that if I can help it. I’m not a giving-in person.
Before the Senior, if conditions allow, the race organisers permit the riders who are going to compete in the final race of the TT one last practice lap each. I went out on the Superbike-spec Fireblade, and if they’d have pulled me in after half a lap I’d have said, Bugger it, we’ll race it, that bike’s all right now, good enough to race, it’s the best it’s been. We can do something with this. But the session didn’t end after half a lap and as I got around to the 33rd, the corner on the track that marks the 33rd mile of the 37.73-mile course, I came across all this mist in the air. It turned out to be oil from, I’m guessing, a blown engine, and I nearly come off on oil dropped on the road.
As soon as I could, I stopped next to some marshals and was shouting and screaming at them that something was on the track and telling them to get some flags out, to warn riders. As I was setting off, I looked over my shoulder and saw something happening, a bike going down. Someone hadn’t been as lucky as I’d been.
It’s less than five miles back to the pits from where I hit the oil and I was angry when I pulled into the pit lane. I was telling my mechanics there should’ve been flags out. Then we were told the practice session had been red-flagged, stopped immediately. What I’d seen over my shoulder was the lad behind me, a 33-year-old Irish rider called Alan Bonner. He came off on the dropped oil and died as a result of his injuries. According to those who tot these things up, he was the 255th competitor to die on the TT’s current Mountain course since 1911 and the third in two days. Jochem van den Hoek didn’t survive his accident at the 11th Milestone earlier that day and Davey Lambert died after crashing at Greeba Castle the day before. That was it, I was off home. I never normally think, That could’ve been me. It’s pointless, it wasn’t me, but I couldn’t help it this time. The crash I survived earlier in the week felt like I’d got away with a big one. I’d pushed my luck enough for one race meeting.
Spellman pointed out that even after all that had happened they still wanted me to race that bike and the ball was in my court. I had to be the one to say I wasn’t willing to. All week he’d been saying it should’ve been the team who pulled the bike and take the decision out of my hands.
He went to see Honda and sat with them to finalise the press release that would announce I wasn’t going to compete in the Senior. All the big bods were in there, including Honda UK’s top man. Spellman said he was dead calm, there were no arguments and he just delivered his view on what he’d seen during the previous 13 days. He told them the bike wasn’t developed or competitive and maybe not even safe and that it should be seen as a team decision to withdraw from the Senior, with no blame. If the press release was going to say it was my decision then I should have the right to say why I pulled out. He reckoned they couldn’t have it both ways. Honda wanted to say that I’d withdrawn from the Senior, which was true, but the reasons I did it for I wasn’t allowed to say.
Spellman had talked to Jonny Twelvetrees before and felt like he was going over old ground again, but he reminded them that a rider like me could bang in 127s on any big bike in the paddock, but without McGuinness here there was no way to prove that the Blade was not fast enough, so it was easy to say I wasn’t pushing it as I was rusty. He also pointed out, again, that I’d gone nearly as quick as a newcomer in 2004 with no TT experience, on a bike I’d built with my dad, so having a year out wasn’t an excuse for the times.
The lack of practice didn’t help, and I wasn’t at my fastest, but the bike was holding me back, I wasn’t holding it back. Dean Harrison passed me in the Superbike race within four miles of the start, like I was stood still and I was pushing.
It was all going back and forth. The team said their data showed I’d been on the back brake down Bray Hill, to which Spellman said no doubt because the bike wasn’t stable and that proved it needed development. They argued it didn’t need developing; it was just my riding style and requirements were different to John’s and the bike was quicker and faster than the previous year’s bike, and that I wasn’t getting the best out of it and needed more bike and riding time.
I wasn’t at this meeting, but the way he explained it was like something from a courtroom drama. They’d say something and Spellman would come back with a counter-argument. After they told him I just needed to ride the bike more, he asked why I didn’t have a stock bike to ride, like plenty of other riders in the Superbike class. They said because they wanted to concentrate on getting the Superbike right for me. ‘So he’s developing it then?’ Spellman asked. ‘Because you’re not developing it with any logic because you’ve got a stock gearbox and an engine out of the BSB bike. If you’re concentrating on the Superbike why let Guy out on the Wilson Craig Supersport? If that’s so he can get more laps, then why not run the stocker?’
He wanted to make it clear that, for whatever reason, the bike wasn’t ready to race at the sharp end of a TT and had problems that we, as a team, couldn’t put our fingers on. But they wouldn’t have it that their bikes weren’t suitable or competitive and it was my riding that was at fault. One of the bigwigs poked his head up from his computer and said. ‘There’s two truths to this story.’ So Spellman asked, ‘Was John happy with the bike then?’ knowing that testing hadn’t gone well for either of us. One of the main men said, ‘Yes, he said it was faster and better all round than last year’s.’
Spellman may not be technically minded but he can smell the bullshit a mile off and when you know the truth and someone is telling you the opposite and trying to dress it up in technical data, then you know they’re really saying ‘We agree but the boss is sat here and I’ve got a steady job, thank you.’
Honda told Spellman they were still keen for me to compete at Southern 100 and Ulster GP, races I love and have had plenty of success at, but when he asked if there were tests planned he was told by Jonny Twelvetrees, ‘I’m going to turn my phone off and get away from motorbikes for a few weeks.’
He came back to the van, pulled me aside and told me, ‘You can’t trust a team that won’t see the wood for the trees’, then relayed all of the above and more. He reckoned if I took the name Honda off that bike I would look at it differently.
Spellman normally stays out of team business, but he was saying this was about facts and revealing what the team were really thinking and saying out loud. I read the statement they’d hammered out and I was happy with it. I thought it was very diplomatic. Honda blamed the weather for a lack of track time and that I’d made the decision, because we weren’t doing the lap times to be competitive. There was no finger-pointing. Those that knew, knew what was going on. If others thought it was all down to me, it was no skin off my nose.
As we were talking, one of Honda’s PR blokes, who Spellman had argued with earlier in the week, rang him. Spellman put his finger to his lips to tell me and Sharon to be quiet, and put his phone on speaker so I could hear him. The PR bloke questioned one word on the press statement that was going out with my name on. It didn’t sound right apparently.
Now, I’d been really calm up to that point but you could call it good timing or bad that he called up … I interrupted him and said, ‘All right, mate. It’s Guy here …’ Then I let rip. I reminded him that I could have told people what I really thought of the bike, but I wasn’t doing that, but don’t twist it even more.
I shouted, ‘Do you want me to tell all these cameras and people that your motorbike tried to kill my teammate and me?’ I was on the limiter. I kept repeating, ‘Is that what you want, mate? Is it, is it?’ I was shaking a bit, still, and Spellman calmly said, ‘I think they know what you really think now. That’s cleared the air.’
I then felt myself get Brian the Chimp back under control and started to laugh. I was a bit embarrassed really and said so to Spellman and Shazza, but after those two weeks I felt a lot better for letting rip.
Spellman then had another call and was very calm; we played the game, we
re professional and out went the statement to the press and public, but we were all a little wiser.
Even then I was still thinking about the Ulster Grand Prix, and after the TT I tested the Fireblade at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire, but that proved to be just one final confirmation that I’d made up my mind.
In late July 2017 Honda released a statement, saying, ‘Having extracted and reviewed the data from the ECU on John’s bike, we now know that a setting on the ECU race kit software resulted in the throttle blipping unexpectedly … ’
‘Although at the time there was a long delay in getting the data from John’s bike due to the ECU being damaged – the ECU had to be sent all the way to the supplier in China to extract the data from it – we put in a counter-measure of a new spec of ECU for the TT to ensure the problem wouldn’t happen again.’
Looking back at what I wrote in February 2017, before I’d even ridden the new Fireblade, is interesting. ‘The target is to do the best I can do. Of course I want to win, but I just want to go back and ride. What would be a failure? Killing myself, that would be a failure. Anything other than that is a result. Win, lose or draw, I want to be getting off the bike and saying, I couldn’t have done any more, I had control for all the race.’
I was right when I finished the Tour Divide in 2016. I was done with racing at this level. Not done with motorbikes or even racing motorbikes, but trying to win TTs.
I wasn’t looking at the TAS team that I’d been with the last time I’d raced the TT and seeing them doing the winning with any jealousy. I walked away from the experience so I had no regrets about any of it. I could’ve been laid in a box thinking, ‘You berk! Why did I do that? I told you so, you dickhead.’ But I got a second bite of the cherry and no harm done.
CHAPTER 6
‘The last thing I needed to be doing was chucking that thing down the road. It cost £450,000’
