A VIEW FROM PITLANE
A review of our season in Golden Era Superbikes.
The good the bad and the ugly, well, let’s start with the good.
Not complaining; there’s been a lot of it – more than last year – because Ritchie started the season in cracking form and won 4 out of 4 races at Brands Hatch. It was his will to win that really took me back.
I’ve been with him at tracks since he was 12 years old, when he started racing in motocross, but I don’t think I’d ever seen such a strong desire in him to beat anything out on the track that weekend.
I knew then, that I could well be looking at a champion at the end of the season. It was a gut feeling I had, we both seemed to feel it together and, even throughout the bad times, it never left us.
Win number 19, clinched it.
He went on to win 19 races, sit on pole more times than anyone else in his class and pulled out a blistering time at Mallory Park to snatch the lap record.
We’ve had the pleasure to share garages with a great bunch too; Martin Stanier with his family, Vince Carlton and his lad Ashley on his 600. It’s been good to watch him improve after a rocky start to the season. And then there’s Drew Plaskitt, who attended every round with his Suzuki SRAD to support Ritchie, a smashing bloke with a smashing bike. We’ve had a great laugh chatting with the Scrutineers, Marshalls and ThundersportGB staff and we’ve made good friends with Colin Port, who’s an excellent snapper!
Big thanks to everyone.
Our sponsors have been great, Wiseco Piston Inc/Race Winning Brands, Kais Suspension, Carrillo, Cradley Kawasaki, Nova Racing Transmissions, Mark Wright at Holbeach Tyres, OPIE oils and R&G Racing. All good people and thanks to all of you.
Then, inevitably in racing there was also the bad. After Brands, at Donington we got a slap in the face when a valve snapped in practice. But the good thing was…Ritchie was offered the Suzuki SRAD to ride. After only 20 minutes practice, he stuck it on Pole position and won 3 races on it.
When we repaired the Kwacka’s engine for round 3 at Snetterton, Ritchie was up for another 4 wins, then crashed in the last race. It was like handing points away to the competition; but that’s racing. It’s bad, it happens, but you deal with it.
Tyres were a problem too, not from a performance point of view, because most of the time Ritchie had to use worn rubber from previous meetings to practice. Sometimes he had to qualify and even race with tyres that were past their best. You can only afford what you can afford.
At Rockingham, the lock-stops came loose and jammed the steering during qualifying. I saw him run straight on up the banking on lap 2 – scattering the Marshalls – he set the fastest time on the previous lap though. A time that lasted most of the session and was only pipped on the last lap by another rider.
At Anglesey, the worse thing ever happened, and it was mistake we should never have made.
We left a paper towel behind the clutch after stripping it down. It clogged up the oil way and almost seized the big ends. Sick with remorse, Ritchie did his utmost on the Suzuki to mitigate the damage
Never give up, even on a 750, he could still give an expensive 1000 a run for its money.
I knew that with the Kawasaki running that weekend would’ve been a different story. He was only just behind our main challenger all weekend on an underpowered bike – some times in front.
At this stage, things were beginning to get tight on points and I could see a glimmer of concern coming over Ritchie. Always analytical about things, he weighed up what he had to do at the next round, Oulton Park – it was for double points too.
When you’re on the floor there’s no place to go except up; you have to, even if you can’t.
Then disaster again in qualifying. He knew he had to be on the front row to win when he high-sided coming out of Lodge in the wet. He was going for a quick lap, and suffered a serious knee injury. The next day we had to lift him onto the bike where he started from the third row. He won by a good margin. Clearly in pain, he went out in Race 2 and finished two-hundredths of a second behind his close rival.
Riding through the pain barrier at Oulton Park.
It was a heroic effort that stopped us haemorrhaging points. It was a pivotal meeting that took us to Donington for a final round with an18-point lead. He’d stopped the flow, now it was time to sew it up.
Ritchie was up for a good scrap, he always is. I could see it in him again, that determination I saw at Brands Hatch at the beginning of the season. In race one though, the gear shift snapped and he was stuck in 5th gear. Another blow, diminishing the points gap even more. How he finished 4th I have no idea…I can only put it down to knowing your bike, calling on all your reserves and rider skill.
He soon put things right though, crucially winning the next two races to clinch the title. I think his performance in race 2, on the Saturday, was possibly his best of the year. Everything he’d worked for all year depended on it; he just went for it, rode a perfect race and got the result.
So, you see, out of the bad comes the good, but then there was the ugly, which is always hard to deal with. In these days of social media people can say what they want, but often without thinking things through first. You get smartass comments for no reason. Often offensive and unpleasant to say the least. I know, I’ve heard it and I’ve seen it – that’s a fact.
Was it really as close as it looked?
In a sport like motorcycle racing there will always be a war of words. We can all deal with it, that’s if they’re based on truth, reality and fact.
So, I thought after the season finished I would take a look at the facts, after all you can’t argue with those, can you?
A matter of facts:
Fact 1: Ritchie has never been topped on points from the first round at Brands Hatch.
Fact 2: He has won more outright races – beating GP1 Classic riders – than any other Golden Era SBK rider during the season.
Fact 3: The points gap is not a true reflection of his season. Total up the time gaps that he’s won by (ahead of the runner-up) and you get an astonishing 2 minutes 58 seconds, which is an average of 17.18 seconds per race.
Fact 4: He rode his spare bike – a 750 Suzuki SRAD – to victory 3 times, after only had 20 minutes practice. Whenever the bike was called upon to perform, he never finished lower than second place on it. A few called it luck. I, along with a lot of riders in the paddock – and some Marshalls it has to be said – call it skill.
Fact 5: He has set fastest lap more times than any other rider in the class. Often going home with the fastest lap of the whole weekend.
Fact 6: He broke the lap record at Mallory Park, on a bike that was losing power.
Fact 7: Budget constraints. At times, he has qualified and won races, on worn tyres because he couldn’t afford and benefit from new ones all the time.
Yorkshire bitter.
I’ve heard that we couldn’t have won the championship if we hadn’t had the Suzuki as a second bike. True, we’re not denying that, but you’ve got to able to adjust and ride it in an instant. That’s purely down to rider ability and skill. Not many can do that on a bike that is not as powerful as the competition and has a completely different character. We were also mainly competing against a two-bike team – they seem to have a grudge against us because we had one too. We just saw that as levelling the playing field.
When he got his head down, no-one could live with him.
Some say that he won it because he got lucky with the track conditions in the race that clinched the championship. All I can say is that it’s a brave man who’s willing to gamble on a damp track at Donington Park choosing slick tyres. Fortune not only favours the brave, it rewards them too; if you’ve got the skill and you’re willing to take a risk.
To cap it all, at the final round, our team was accused of gamesmanship and trying to rig the outcome of a race! I’ve never known anything like it in all the years I've been involved in racing. This excuse hit an all-time low, in a pathetic attempt to justify that they just weren’t good enough over the season to beat him.
It’s the rider wins a championship, not just the bike.
Ritchie is more than a worthy champion in my book, and I would argue that the majority of those in the paddock would agree with me. However, there is one, or maybe two, who still can’t seem to accept the facts.
Crossing the line
And that is, that in the end, Ritchie is number 1. He did it fairly and squarely with a bike we built together, with help from sponsors, friends and a whole lot of determination and grit when it mattered. The rest doesn’t matter at all. I reckon that just about wraps it up. See you next year.
Bernie Thornton, Team 71
