the season borrowing Philip’s KTM SX125. It was a horrible bike and never felt right or like it was mine, so that 2002 season was certainly lacking something, and although I was always competitive I never got to win another British schoolboy championship.
By then, I knew I didn’t want to continue with A levels or go to university after I left school the next summer, and Mum and Dad made it clear I was never going to be allowed to lie around at home trying to be a professional motocross rider. My parents had always seemed to find a way to finance the racing and Mum was always very good at putting sponsorship proposals together. But they had been funding this adventure for the best part of ten years and now I was going to have to go to work, to earn money and treat motorbikes as a hobby and nothing else.
I was also aware I had two brothers and a sister, and it wasn’t fair that my parents had spent so much time and energy allowing me to follow my dreams. Dad had taken over Granda’s transport business, which is still going strong now, and that needed more of his attention. It was getting to the point that my ambition was in one place and reality was in another.
I’d grown up and raced in the early motocross days with the Laverty brothers, who made the transition to road racing with some success and appeared to live this glamorous life as professional racers. I wanted some of that for myself and, seeing them ride, I was sure I could do the same. I was also a bit envious of some of my rivals who were starting to train in the USA during the winter, some of them even home-schooled because their parents were so loaded and committed.
I knew it was going to be tough to earn money from racing, but I had to give it a go. I began flirting with the idea of trying to scrape together enough personal sponsorship to buy a ride in 2003 with a bigger, manufacturer-supported team from the UK, a process where I would pay for a ride by covering the costs of the bike or the tyre budget or, in some cases, much more.
I met a guy called Stevie Mills, who has become a great friend, and he helped me look for a professional seat. Another friend, Gareth Crichton, picked up on more of the spannering as Dad started to roll off the throttle a bit during that 2002 season, and we had a lot of discussions about where it was all heading. I was at a crossroads. A few of my dad’s racing friends offered me bikes to go pure road racing, like at the Isle of Man TT, but that wasn’t for me. I also had an opportunity through Dad’s link with Joe Millar, a great friend of Granda and high-profile sponsor, to get hold of a 125cc Honda race bike that we could run ourselves. But that was short-circuit racing and that seemed a huge leap considering I’d never ridden on tarmac.
It was around this time that Arenacross became popular in the UK. Arenacross was the equivalent of Supercross in the USA, where a compact motocross track is built with around 5,000 tonnes of earth shipped into an indoor arena.
I rode in one event for a guy called Darren Wilson at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast. Darren got hold of an ex-factory GP bike, Stevie hooked me up with all the gear and Mum took me for a bit of practice without Dad knowing. I remember Darren pushing the bike up to the start in the dark with all the music blaring out, the flashing lights and the announcer hyping everybody up on the PA. My name was called, and 8,000 people were cheering. My heart rate was probably higher than it’s ever been, and I got awfully bad arm-pump during the races but managed to split 1–2 finishes with Shaun Simpson, who’s still a GP rider now. I threw my goggles into the crowd at the end of the race I won – it felt like proper rock star stuff!
I think it opened a few people’s eyes to what I could do and gave me a little taste of the life of a Supercross rider in the USA where, like everything else, the show, the spectacle, the size of the arena and crowds are ten times the size. I would have jumped at any opportunity to go and do it in the USA, but there was no real evidence of any motocross rider from the UK making it big in Supercross.
After the buzz died down, I could see the reality of my situation. My options about what to do the following year were kind of drying up.
CHAPTER 4
At the end of the 2002 season, Gareth Crichton told me about this advert he’d seen in Motor Cycle News, the weekly industry newspaper. It was for a kind of audition for a ride with a team in a short-circuit racing programme run by Red Bull and Honda. It was called the Red Bull Rookies and Gareth had already spoken to Dad about it in detail. They thought it would be a good idea to go for it, especially because opportunities in motocross were really drying up, along with Dad’s ability to finance it.
The grab headline said, ‘Deal worth £70,000’, which kind of got my attention, but none of it was going to the rider; it would cover the cost of a bike, spares, tyres, a mechanic, pretty much everything to do a season’s racing in the British 125cc Championship except travelling expenses. We thought. ‘Wow! This is our X Factor – let’s try and do this!’
The Red Bull Rookies already had two riders – Midge Smart and Guy Farbrother, who was sadly killed in a road crash just after the start of the following season. They wanted a third rider, aged 14 to 17, with bike experience, and I had to provide a CV and write 40 words on why I should be picked. I wrote mine in bullet points like ‘hard-working … willing to learn … enjoys working with others … Ulster, Irish and British Motocross champion … Arenacross race winner … wants to be world champion’.
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
