I was drawn to road racing after seeing the programme on Barry Sheene’s crash at Daytona. Not from a morbid point of view, but I was fascinated by what drove him to get back out racing so quickly a few weeks after, that and the spectacle of it all. I was hooked!



At the time everyone I knew had an FS1 or FS1E, and the less well heeled had anything from a Mobylette, Demme Dove to the obligatory Honda 50, and if anyone can remember, a Puch 50 in JPS black and gold livery! A quick little bike with 5 gears and 4 neutrals!

I was one of the riders with a Honda 50, so what was to become a career started out of necessity. No amount of grinding valves and changing piston rings would get it close to a Yamaha, mmm got to get a 2 stroke! Riding my friend’s FS1E, and just hearing that rasp coming from the engine was probably the point at which my fate had been secured….

Once I was mobile I was back and forth to Brands Hatch and Lydden circuit all season, yes, on a Honda 50.

The days of the 4 stroke were numbered and as the year progressed they were getting trounced by 250, 350, and 750 TZ Yamahas. I think it was the awesome sound of the unsilenced racers and the smell of the Castrol R and avgas that hooked me, and I haven’t looked back since.

At the same time, I had become friends with a local rider and after finding that he raced a TZ350 I started to see and understand the importance of spending time on preparation, and attention to detail. Just keeping the machine clean would show up small problems in the chassis like cracks and other racing induced fatigue.

RULE 1: No job is too small or insignificant be it on a GP Racer or a Sunday afternoon special.

I was driven to start tuning not only by my fascination for 2 stroke engines and the fact that all those ports were so readily accessable and begging to be modified, but also because I, and almost everyone I knew at the time was financially challenged. So it was do it yourself or not at all.

I have learned many lessons over the years, mainly, no one is going to tell you anything that is truly worth knowing about tuning, because it takes so long and so much hard work to find out the things that are important. Think about it, if you found something that really did work, would you tell all and sundry, especially if they were your racing competitors! So if your bike is going well don’t just go and change everything because someone heard about it from someone else.