starting to run through faster. Even for the faster corners, I tended to brake that little bit earlier and then let go of the brakes to run in with as much speed as possible. The other riders would leave the braking until the last minute and then start to slide the back end round a little bit while scrubbing off speed. If I was behind any other riders, they would hold me up in the middle of the corner because by then I would definitely be carrying more speed.
I’m slightly tighter than COlin Edwards and Troy Corser going into this turn.
The result of that extra speed was that I had to hang off the bike that much more than anyone else to hold the line. If anyone were to compare pictures of me with almost any other rider at the same point on the same corner, the other rider might have his knee on the ground and his arse hanging off the bike. With me, my head and shoulder were also nearly touching the ground. For a right-hand corner, my left arm would basically be totally locked out so that I could reach over as far as possible.
At somewhere like Assen, one of the faster tracks, my line would be pretty much the same as anyone else’s. I might just have turned a little bit earlier into corners, but other riders, like Jamie, turned in a lot later than the rest. He was always a hard opponent to get past because he would brake so late and so wide. You would think you were about to get past him when he’d come whoaaaa! right across you. I was always glad to get past Jamie whenever he got away in front of me at the start of the race. But it was no surprise that he lost his front end so often by braking so late on such wide lines.
The rider who probably had a similar line to me was Pier-Francesco Chili, who also enjoyed Assen. Colin Edwards is also similar in a lot of respects. But riders like Garry McCoy, Noriyuki Haga and Chris Walker are in some ways all about a lot of action going into corners and being a big handful coming out. That’s fine if it suits their style of riding, but that was never my style.
Thre’s probably only a foot difference in it but I am holding a tighter line into the corner in 1999.
So, once I had turned early into a corner, I wanted to get all my body weight hanging off the bike as early as possible. That way I could hold the tightest line and open the throttle mid-corner. At a track like Assen, where there are more fast corners than average, no one could live with me because the other riders did not open the throttle until they were coming out of the corners. It’s no coincidence that Chili was one of the few exceptions.
Turn one at Assen is a perfect example. You approach very fast in fifth gear and then, suddenly, it’s brmm-brmm and you’re down to third gear while going hard on the brakes. While the other riders were still on the brakes, scrubbing off that speed, I had swooped in, picked up on gas, taken the weight off the front end and accelerated out. When I was injured in 2000, I had to smile to myself when I was watching the race. You had riders like Haga and Bayliss going hard on the brakes with their back ends kicking out all over the place. I thought to myself, Guys, that’s not the way to go round Assen. The secret is to keep it smooth. Because Assen used to be part of a road circuit, the camber of the track banks right for the right-hand corners and also helps you to keep the bike tight into the corner.
On the slowest corners however, like a chicane or a hairpin, I could be as hard on the brakes as the best of them. There is no way you can carry corner speed through these anyway. Albacete, for instance, has a lot of first-gear corners, so there was no way I could rely on the style that suited me at places like Assen.
One track I never liked, and which did not suit me at all, was Laguna Seca in the States. The camber of the track almost falls away from you at the first corner, and the rest of the circuit is flat, so there were certain parts where I found it impossible to carry any corner speed. The front end always seemed to be pushing and I tried to hang even further off to try to keep the line. I even found myself trying to turn the bars to try to keep the bike in. Before I knew it, the front end was tucking in and I was in trouble. That circuit was just not built for the way I ride a bike, even though I handled the Corkscrew, supposedly the hardest part, as well as anyone. The Corkscrew is a tight chicane with a steep drop which requires the bike to be quickly flicked over from one side to the other, and I was always good at that because of my slightly more upright position on the bike. I also attacked it more aggressively than the other riders, because I was not as physically strong as some of them. I’ve even thrown the bike over too hard at times, kicking the back end out as a result. And sometimes I’ve tried to pull the bike over too quickly, almost losing the front, and I did slide off really slowly once in practice.
Wrestling with my Honda in the 1990 British Superbike Championship. You can see that I was trying to hang off, but keep my line.
The next corner at Laguna Seca is also banked, one of the few on that circuit where I could actually carry some corner speed. I always found myself catching up in the last part of a lap there. In 1997 I was passing people on every lap in that section and riding it as well as anybody, only to lose the race in the last couple of laps to John Kocinski. The first part of the circuit was a different matter, all about hard braking, sliding in and sliding out. I tried a few times to maintain my corner speed, only to find myself in the dirt. It probably took me a couple of years to figure out that the track just did not suit me. Then it became a matter of trying to hold people off. I probably rode as hard to finish fourth or fifth at Laguna Seca as I did to win somewhere else a couple of weeks later.
Track 3DONINGTON
Great BritainRating: 9“I’m good here and there are large sections which suit my style of riding in carrying corner speed. It’s also very safe and there’s good British support.”
Donington Park has been one big high followed by a big low. I didn’t get off to a good start because in my first race there at a club meeting in 1984, I crashed at Redgate. But it was at Donington that I first realized how much British success meant to all the home fans. In the 1990 Grand Prix, I was pushing too hard at McLeans and came off. The look on the faces of the fans said it all, and I knew I would have to deliver one day.
I also crashed in the first race of the World Superbike round in 1992. I was the leader by three seconds going into Goddards but I tipped the bike over a bit too far in a pathetically slow crash. I tried to get back on before noticing that the footrest had been knocked off. It was a real kick in the teeth because I had just bounced back from a difficult year in 1991. All I could do was slump over the bike and burst out crying. But, typical of Donington, I didn’t have to wait for long before there was a high. I won the second race of the day, the biggest win of my career at that point.
Of course, there was another low on the horizon. In that year’s 500cc British Grand Prix, I was lying fifth on a privateer Harris Yamaha. All of a sudden, going into Redgate, I joined Doug Chandler in the gravel while Kevin Schwantz frantically waved a marshal’s flag to try to get the race stopped. John Kocinski’s bike had expired, spilling coolant on the track. There was nothing I could do about it.
The following year was a similar story. After coming a close second behind Scott Russell in the first race, which was over two legs because some oil had been deposited on the track, I had probably my worst crash at the track in the second race.
It is beginning to sound as though I could never stay on at Donington, but that was the last time I crashed there, although the sequence of highs and lows kept on going. I was in for a
