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Niall Mackenzie
The autobiography
Niall Mackenzie
with Stuart Barker
With love for my mum, Amelia.1929-2002
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Foreword
CHAPTER ONE Chip Shops and Railway Tracks
CHAPTER TWO Tractor Racing
CHAPTER THREE No Van, Man
CHAPTER FOUR Stealing Tomatoes
CHAPTER FIVE Watching the Washing Machine
CHAPTER SIX I’m Not Really a Welder
CHAPTER SEVEN Thanks for the Watch
CHAPTER EIGHT Stoney’s Return
CHAPTER NINE A Lucky Strike
CHAPTER TEN A Baboon on the Lawn
CHAPTER ELEVEN A Horse at the Traffic Lights
CHAPTER TWELVE Steak Instead of Spam
CHAPTER THIRTEEN It’s a Boat – It’ll Float
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Dead Rat
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 10 Downing Street
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Mackenzie Shuffle
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Like a Virgin
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Evil Twins
CHAPTER NINETEEN Pipe and Slippers
CHAPTER TWENTY World Domination
Career Results
Index
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword
by MICK DOOHAN
Five Times 500cc World Champion
1994-1998
Niall Mackenzie was one of the first people I got to know when I started Grand Prix racing with Rothmans Honda in 1989 and since then we’ve always had a friendly relationship. He was one of the few guys against whom you could race and then go and have a coffee with at the end of the day without any worries. It was good to have him and his wife Jan around the GP paddock and they were very popular with everyone.
Back then we used to do some training together and would often go out running, which was something I couldn’t do any more after I broke my leg at Assen in 1992.
In my first season, I sometimes used to ask Niall about the weather in the various countries in Europe. I was straight out of Australia and had never been to most of those places, whereas Niall knew his way around. Before my first GP at Spa Francorchamps, I remember I mentioned to Niall that the weather in Belgium wasn’t so flash and he replied that he’d never been in a dry Grand Prix at Spa in all the years he’d raced there! Niall beat me in the 1989 championship when he was seventh and I was ninth.
That season, and the next, we were often racing each other closely and he was always a very fair sportsman in the way he rode.
Over the years that we’ve been friends he has visited me in Australia and we’ve been out on boats together and spent lots of time just relaxing away from the Grands Prix.
Niall started GP racing a year or two before me and around that time there was plenty of strong competition with riders such as Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Gardner, Christian Sarron and others.
It was a really quality field in those days but Niall had a pole position, seven podiums, and a total of twenty-eight top five finishes between 1987 and 1993.
The results don’t always tell the whole story, but on this occasion they show that Niall was a very competitive motorcycle racer and Britain’s best rider in 500cc Grands Prix at that time.
Since then he has raced in a variety of championships at world level and in Britain, mostly on Superbikes, and not surprisingly, he’s always done well relative to the capabilities of his equipment.
Another of Niall’s strengths is his character. We all have our ups and downs in this sport, but Niall was one who enjoyed his success without getting too carried away with it and could also take setbacks in his stride. He’s a guy who always seems to bounce back.
Niall obviously enjoys riding and racing motorcycles, otherwise he wouldn’t have had the motivation to keep going for as long as he did. Motivation is everything if you’re going to have some success in racing; you really have to want to ride the thing, and Niall did that for many seasons.
I can’t think of a better role model for young British riders than Niall. He’s got talent, determination, and most importantly he’s a good guy. I’m sure this publication will give a good insight into how his career unfolded.
I’m fortunate to have Niall as a friend and I look forward to catching up with him again soon.
Mick Doohan
Australia, March 2002
CHAPTER ONE Chip Shops and Railway Tracks
I remember having a conversation with Wayne Gardner and Randy Mamola about how we all got started in bike racing.
At the time, the three of us were at the peak of our careers racing in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championships. Wayne had won the title in 1987, Randy had been runner up four times and I was a full factory rider for Honda, and had set pole position in my first ride for the team at the Japanese GP.
We were sitting around a campsite having a barbecue somewhere on the continent and their stories of biking childhoods seemed so exotic to me. Randy had been riding children’s dirt track bikes round purpose-built tracks all over California since he was about four years old and Wayne had been doing the same thing in Australia. I, on the other hand, made my two-wheeled debut on a knackered old scooter dragged off a scrap heap at the ripe old age of thirteen and didn’t even think about racing until I was nineteen. So I was wondering what to say when I had to reveal my racing pedigree because it sure as hell wasn’t going to stand up next to Wayne and Randy’s.
When Randy turned to me and said ‘What about you Niall? How did you get started in racing?’ I decided to lie. Instead of telling them how it really was, I concocted a story that I thought would make them laugh. I said that I’d been working for the electricity board in Scotland (which was true) when I got caught in a woman’s house doing a job dressed from head to toe in her underwear that I’d taken from her bedroom drawers. I added that I was sacked from my job and thought I might as well try my hand at racing bikes professionally since I had been thinking about it anyway.
Wayne Gardner erupted. He was actually crying with laughter. I still don’t know if he was laughing so hard because he thought it was a funny story or because he thought it was true. But either way, there’s still nasty rumours kicking around the paddocks of the world that I have transvestite tendencies and I still blame Wayne for spreading them so I think he probably did believe me. I suppose he had even more reason to believe my story after I dressed as Grand Prix racer Rob McElnea’s girlfriend just so we could get into an all night couples bar in Italy.
Just for the record, it’s absolutely not true – I’m not a transvestite. In fact, my wife’s clothes don’t even fit me.
But making up that story to raise a laugh was an indication of just how completely out of place I felt in the company of Grand Prix superstars like Wayne and Randy, even though I was giving them a good run for their money in the GPs at the time.
I simply couldn’t get my head around the fact that Wayne Gardner and Freddie Spencer were my team-mates or that I had become friends with people I’d only previously known from seeing on television. But most of all, I couldn’t believe that someone like me, who came from a small, unremarkable village in Central Scotland, could be mixing with the best riders in the world in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship.
Everyone accepts that GP racers come from Italy, America, Australia or somewhere equally exotic, so being born in Fankerton seemed to rule me out of a career in GPs straight away. Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Modesto, California or the Gold Coast, Australia. In fact, my home town is so small that it’s not even listed on most road maps.
So let me just put the record straight. Fankerton is situated about a mile from Denny in Central Scotland and it’s just a tiny village of around sixty houses, most of which were built to provide homes for the local papermill workers.
I was brought home there to a council house at 3 Myot View after being delivered at Stirling Royal Infirmary at 3.15pm on 19 July 1961 and my parents called me Niall Macfarlane Mackenzie – a name as suited to Grand Prix racing as my background was.
My father Neil, chose the Gaelic spelling of his own name for me since he came from Inverness, the capital of the Scottish Highlands and a city steeped in Gaelic tradition. The pronunciation, incidentally, is the same as with the standard spelling of the name, although that fact has been lost on many TV commentators who have who persisted in pronouncing it ‘Nyall.’
Dad was a qualified engineer but spent twentythree years working in India as a tea plantation manager before returning to Scotland in the late 1950s and marrying my mum, Amelia Macfarlane. I was an only child but I’ve got three half-brothers, John, Brian and Colin, from my dad’s first marriage.
Dad lost most of his savings from India in a succession of ill-advised business investments and he returned to engineering work to support my mum, who worked as a secretary, and myself. We weren’t exactly on the breadline but there wasn’t a lot of extra cash for luxuries and from a very early age, I knew that if I wanted something extra, I was going to have to work for it.
So, straight from primary school I helped on a farm carrying milk from the milking parlour to the tank. I was paid ten bob (50p) a week and I loved it. I knew there was no money in paper rounds so as soon as my parents allowed me to, I got up before school and did a milk round for £8 a week and also worked on the farm. It was good fun as well as being an earner, and me and my mate Beefy thought we were the sharpest milkmen in Scotland.
My mum opened a bank account for me with my christening money when I was very young and I was fascinated by how money could just grow if you left it there. To me, interest was money for nothing and I thought that was great. I’m not tight, you understand, but I’ve just always been a good saver. I don’t know if it’s a security thing but it definitely came from my mum. She was always good with money and that grounding has stood me in good stead throughout my career.
I suppose my childhood was much the same as any other kids growing up in rural Scotland at the time. Cash may have been tight but as long as there were rivers, forests and glens to play in, boys could be boys, knees could be muddied and everyone was happy. Having a friend who lived on a farm helped too. All the kids congregated at the farm and if you wanted to work there you could. I suppose it was slave labour in a way but we loved it all the same.
The farm seemed more like an adventure playground than a workplace with all the tractors and machinery to play on and the tunnels that we explored in the haysheds.
Some of the funniest times I experienced as a kid was when I played ‘The Grand National’ and ‘Chap Door Run’ with my pals. There was a big square of council houses that had all their gardens backing onto each other and the aim of ‘The Grand National’ was to make a run for it and throw yourself over all the hedges while being chased by the people who lived in the houses. It was a particular favourite with me and my mate Hammy. ‘Chap Door Run’ is just one of a thousand names for every kid’s other favourite game – knocking on doors and running away! Well, at least we were getting exercise.
But while my childhood was relatively carefree, and even financially productive to a certain extent, my teenage years were more trying. In 1975 when I was just thirteen, my father died after a long history of health problems. He had a heart condition mainly due to working too hard and playing too hard; he had just hammered himself when he lived in India. He’d been teetotal ever since I was born but the damage had already been done after years of playing too much polo and drinking too much whisky – not a good combination.
My father’s death not only affected my teenage years, it also affected my career prospects as having a motorbike when dad was alive just wasn’t an option. He actually had a 350 AJS at one point and used to ride it fifty miles to and from work every day as my uncle Alick still reminds me. But when it came to me having a bike, he gave me the usual speech about money and safety like most parents do. So if my dad hadn’t died, I might never have become a bike racer because he really wasn’t keen on the whole motorbike thing. Maybe because he’d owned one he was more aware of the dangers than most.
I know that lots of kids who lose a parent can be psychologically scarred for life, but somehow I quickly accepted the reality of the situation. To be honest, it was almost a relief when he died because he’d been ill for three years and it was so sad to watch him deteriorating. I loved him to bits and was probably closer to him than to my mum but in a way I was prepared for his death. I shed a few tears with my mum that night but went back to school a week later and tried to carry on. There were a few tears at school too because kids can be so cruel about things like that, but after a few weeks I was fine and just got on with my life. In fact I received a lot of attention for having lost my father and quite enjoyed it.
As a rule, I wasn’t a bad kid but I was definitely given more of a free rein by my mum and my teachers because my dad was dead. It sounds terrible but I actually loved the freedom of not having a father figure around. I didn’t completely abuse that freedom but there was a lot less discipline in my life than some of my mates had to put up with. I was never one to hang around the graveyard smoking fags, doing drugs and getting drunk all the time – it just wasn’t my thing – but I had a few Strongbow Cider experiences and generally goofed around a bit more than before.
Like I said, I didn’t abuse my new-found freedom but like most young boys, I overstepped the mark on a few occasions and faced the wrath of the law as well as that of my mum, particularly when I stole my friend’s dad’s car.
I had learned to drive tractors when I was very young so I could drive a car with no problem, long before I was old enough to drive legally. My mates and I didn’t go to school much in our final year and we thought it would be a good idea to ‘borrow’ a car to cruise around in to pass the time and show off. So the four of us, me, Shanksy, Stoney and Bunny (Stoney would come back to haunt me on the other side of the world years later when I was racing in GPs), started to drive around in the car quite regularly. I suppose it was only a matter of time before we got caught. We eventually got too cocky and once when we were parked behind the ice cream van at the school gates, a flashing blue light came up behind us. I floored the accelerator and took off, getting chased round the streets until I finally got some distance between us and the police, ditched the car and made a run for it. I got out and ran off as did Shanksy who was in the passenger seat, but the child locks were on in the back and Stoney and Bunny couldn’t get out. They were sitting ducks for the cops to nab and were taken straight down to the police station and photographed and fingerprinted like real criminals. They eventually ‘squealed’ and told the cops everything and I got fingered as the driver.
Up to that point, my mum had never hit me, and my dad had never laid a finger on me when he was alive, but that night my mum attacked me, pulling my hair and kicking and screaming like a banshee. I didn’t like seeing her in such a state and I realised I’d made a mistake that I didn’t want to repeat so I tried to behave myself a bit more after that.
Apart from gaining a bit of disciplinary leeway, the most significant effect of losing my dad was that I was free to pursue my interest in motorcycles, which had been sparked off by a friend’s dad who raced bikes. He was called Jimmy Rae and he used to race at the Isle of Man TT and in the Scottish championships. Bob Maclntyre’s old mechanic, Pirn Fleming, used to spanner for him and Jimmy had known Bob too so that always impressed us as kids, as Bob Mac was Scotland’s most famous bike racer and the first man to do a 100mph lap at the TT.
Hanging around that garage was my first real exposure to bikes but I wasn’t mad on them at that point; I was just interested like most young lads would be.
It was only when I actually got to ride a bike that I became hooked, even though my introduction to powered two-wheel transport was less than glamorous, as I’ve already explained. While my future Grand Prix rivals were learning their trades on expensive children’s racing motorcycles as soon as they could sit on them, I had to wait until I was thirteen before I sat on a bike and even then it was more of a push-bike than a motorbike. And rather than riding on a purpose built schoolboy motocross track my debut was on an old railway line.
The first bike I ever rode was a Raleigh scooter and it relied on good old pedal power more than the power of its minuscule combustion engine. It was basically a push-bike with a little engine and some of my mates had dragged it off a dump and managed to get it going so we ended up on the old railway line that used to serve Carron Grove Papermill with it. I was the youngest one there and was given a go and I just couldn’t believe that this push-bike thing was moving without me having to peddle – well, sometimes at least. It must have made about 3bhp but I was just blown away with the whole concept and that was the start of it for me: I had to have a motorbike.
It’s debatable whether my first two-wheeled purchase could actually be described as a motorbike however as Honda’s C90 is probably the most basic form of two-wheeled transport there is. But its reputation for reliability and its ease of use have made it the biggest selling bike of all time with some thirty million of them having been sold to date, mostly to grannies and pizza delivery boys.
I paid about £40 for my second hand C90, which was quite a lot of cash back then but I had saved up enough money from my milk round and I just had to have it. I mostly rode it round the fields with my old orange helmet on but sometimes I would have to ride it on the road to get to the fields even though it had no tax or insurance and I hadn’t passed my test. My mates were mostly older and had Yamaha FSlEs and Suzuki AP50s so I was always playing catch up.
After the C90, I bought a Honda TL125 trials bike from Lloyds Brothers in Hamilton. I don’t really know why I wanted one because I certainly didn’t do any trials on it. It cost £330 brand new, which was a fortune to me, and I had to save everything I earned for six months to get it since my mum still didn’t want me to have a bike and wouldn’t let me use any of the money she’d put away for me.
As soon as I turned seventeen, I naturally wanted a proper bike for the road and the coolest thing a seventeen year old could have in the late 1970s was a Yamaha FS1E or ‘Fizzy’ as they became affectionately known. So I sold the Honda TL125 to raise cash to buy a ‘Fizzy’ and I was ready to rock. But first there was the minor inconvenience of passing a bike test. I could have ridden the little pedal-assisted Fizzy on a provisional licence indefinitely but I had aspirations of moving onto bigger bikes so I took my test at the first opportunity.
Fortunately, for me at least, riding standards were not quite as strict in the 1970s as they are now and I passed my test at the first attempt even though my examiner disappeared before the test was over! Nowadays, you take your test on a bike with a radio link to the examiner, who’s on another bike. But in those days, the examiner just used to watch you riding round the streets as he stood on the pavement. At one point, I was asked to ride round the block and the examiner said he would hide behind a car and jump out holding his hand up for me to do an emergency stop. I went round the block but got lost and by the time I found the right street again he was gone – nowhere to be seen. I somehow managed to find my way back to the test centre and he was already there, waiting to give me my licence. I think he just wanted to go home as it was half past four on a dark and drizzly winter afternoon in Falkirk and he was just going through the motions, but that was fine by me as I still got my licence.
If there is one downside to motorcycles it’s that they can be dangerous. Whichever way you dress up the facts and figures, the truth remains that a lot of people both on the road and on racetracks, get hurt or killed riding bikes. But anyone who rides a bike has weighed up the risks and decided they’re worth taking. After all, you can’t live your life wrapped in cotton wool trying to avoid every possible danger. Taking risks and getting the adrenaline pumping is what makes people feel alive and, when all’s said and done, bikes are great fun and that’s why we ride them.
Even so, I had a grim early lesson in the dangers of motorcycling. I had bought the Fizzy from a friend called Craig Feeney who had just bought a bigger 250cc Ham Yam (a customised Yamaha with bolt-on racing parts) which was considered the bees’ knees at the time. A few months later, Craig was paralysed from the chest down after a road accident. I was gutted for my friend but never thought about selling up and quitting bikes. It was a big shock because he was in a wheelchair but it didn’t put me off and I actually bought a Ham Yam similar to Craig’s not long after his accident. Craig eventually received a big compensation pay out and he helped me out financially when I started racing.
In those early days, I still didn’t harbour any ambitions to be a racer. In fact, I had no ambitions at all except to enjoy myself. It’s not that I was totally stupid. I was actually quite good at school. I managed to get seven ‘O’ Levels (the equivalent of GCSEs), and I even stayed on at school to study for four Highers (the Scottish version of English ‘A’ Levels). However a crash on my Fizzy resulted in a damaged knee which in turn resulted in several weeks off school. I missed a lot of the groundwork for the new term and I was fed up with trying to catch up so I just left school and went to work full time on the farm. I still had my milk run in the morning and I helped at a haulage firm at night so I was making enough cash to get by.
My mum would have supported me financially through college if I had wanted to go but the idea of studying for four years at that age just didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to be having a good time and anyway I liked driving tractors at the farm, doing all the harrowing and rolling and the like, so why would I want to be stuck in a classroom?
However, the glamorous world of motor sports seemed something that only other, more privileged children could aspire to. In fact, the closest I ever got to considering racing as a career was dreaming of being a rally car driver as a kid but I never considered that as a realistic option – it was just day-dreaming stuff. As for bike racing, it never even entered my head. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start for one thing. Where I came from, you were considered lucky just to get a trade apprenticeship and the highest you could aim for was getting in with the big companies like BP or ICI in Grangemouth. I certainly wasn’t encouraged to dream about alternative glamorous lifestyles so, like everyone else, I stuck with the jobs I had and just got on with things.
When I wasn’t working, I started to discover the pleasures of girls and alcohol and I liked what I found. I knew from playing Postman’s Knock at Sunday school at a very early age that I was definitely heterosexual! We used to organise snogging sessions in primary seven when I was ten. I’d cover myself in Old Spice aftershave and get stuck in and it was really exciting even though we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
I suppose my first proper girlfriend was Lorraine Binnie who came from a very good family of Baptists. I wasn’t exactly religious, reliable or mature so I’m sure the Binnies were pleased to see the back of me when Lorraine and I drifted apart.
But by the time I was seventeen I’d popped my cherry and never looked back! I dated some nice girls over the years but never wanted a steady girlfriend because I was too busy with bikes and fooling around with my mates.
At seventeen, I also started going to pubs with my pals. I looked so young that I couldn’t get served before that, so up until then we’d had to content ourselves by buying bottles of Pomagne or Buckfast from the off-licence and drinking them in the park. Pure class.
When I did go out drinking, it would be at The Pines in Denny or at various Young Farmers discos which were a big thing in rural Scotland at the time (and probably still are). I was already familiar with The Pines pub because of the chip shop of the same name next door. We all used to hang about at The Pines chip shop every night as kids then we graduated to the pub next door when we were old enough. We were there every night with push-bikes, motorbikes, cars or whatever we had. Everyone on bikes would try to show off doing wheelies and stunts and I was no exception. I had one go wrong once and ended up riding right in through the chip shop doors, landing on my backside in a heap, back wheel still spinning, saying ‘Two steak pies and a fish supper please.’
It was a great atmosphere at The Pines. Everyone got on well together and the cops pretty much left us alone because we weren’t doing any damage, chip shop doors notwithstanding. I was always good at socialising with different groups from the rough kids right through to the really academic types. I just seemed to blend in well with anyone.
By this time, my friends Alistair and Stewart Rae (Jimmy’s boys) had started racing and I went with them to several meetings in Scotland and in the north of England. I still had no intention of going racing myself, I was chuffed just to be helping the lads. They had a Fiat van, which was always breaking down, and we went all over the place in it having a great time wherever we’d go.
There would be the Rae brothers, me and my best mate Wullie McKay, with whom I worked, and we always got drunk on Saturday nights and ended up fighting each other in the back of the van. We were all in sleeping bags battling for space to stretch out and once someone started kicking, all hell broke loose. It actually got pretty rough and there were some nasty cuts and bruises dished out but it was such a laugh that we didn’t care.
I figured those boys were going to be world champions when they started finishing in the top six in club races. I believed they would go all the way.
But even attending race meetings and helping out where I could wasn’t enough to inspire me to go racing myself. It was something entirely different which provided that inspiration. It was called an RD350LC and it was Yamaha’s hot new street bike.
When the RD350LC was first launched in 1980, it was the bike for teenage boy racers and it still has a cult following to this day. With a top speed of 110mph, it was derived straight from the racetrack and I just knew I had to have one. Although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the bike which launched my road-racing career and helped keep the wolves from the door for the next twenty years.
But before that happened, I still had to learn my trade on the streets of Denny with the newly acquired RD that, incidentally, cost me the princely sum of £1130. My mates and I had a circuit that ran round Denny and the official start line was at The Pines pub. On a flying lap, we’d ride past there at over 100mph and I did my first through-the-box wheelie on that circuit too, which was one of my best moments in biking. I’ll never forget the feeling of changing right up into third gear on the back wheel. I was ‘the daddy’ that night and I remember stepping off the bike and passing all the girls going into the chippie trying to act all cool about it. But inside I was bursting with pride and I knew (or thought) that I was the man in Denny that night.
I suppose my propensity for speed was beginning to blossom on the little Yam although I didn’t realise it at the time. I used to pass people on the brakes before the junction at the bottom of the road and didn’t really know why I was faster than they were – I thought they were just braking early for some reason. But I was always nervous of traffic on the roads and never really felt that comfortable. I fell off the LC a few times on filthy, greasy roads but it was always at low speeds and I only ever skinned my knees. Falling off back then never did my confidence as a road rider any good – it just reminded me that too many things could go wrong on public roads. And if you don’t want to ride your motorcycle on public roads, there’s only one place left to go – the racetrack.
After all, Knockhill was only a few miles away and it would soon be hosting rounds of the allnew 500cc Scottish Production Championship. By lucky coincidence, most of the entrants would be on Yamaha’s new RD350LC, the bike that I had been racing round the streets. Surely a track would be safer?
CHAPTER TWO Tractor Racing
When I bought my Yamaha RD350LC at the end of 1980 I didn’t actually have a driving licence. I’d lost it due to a series of stupid incidents which meant I accumulated enough points to have it taken off me, although I got it back soon afterwards.
On one occasion, when I just had my provisional licence, I got caught driving a car with someone beside me who didn’t have a full licence either and we got nicked. I thought the chances of getting done again the same night for the same offence were zero so we drove on to Falkirk unperturbed but against all the odds, I got caught again!
But the clincher came when I was still working at my friend’s farm; I was driving a tractor down a country road when I came across an old farmer in another tractor and thought I could overtake him, even though we were both maxed out at around 24mph. With everything in my Massey Ferguson 35 cab rattling and shaking, I squeezed every last mph out of the thing but, although I got alongside him, I had no power left to get past and there was a corner approaching fast. A car appeared and was heading straight for me but somehow the driver managed to stop and the old farmer grudgingly backed off and let me pull in in front of him. That was when another car came round the corner, skidded, and slammed into the first car.
I should have stopped but instead I kept my head down and pretended I didn’t see anything even though the whole thing was visible in my mirrors. Anyway, I got my just rewards because the old farmer recognised me and reported me to the police so they caught up with me and added my driving licence to their collection.
As soon as I got my licence back, I started riding the RD everywhere. Then late in the winter of 1980 the SACU (Scottish Auto Cycle Union) announced that they would be running a 500cc production championship the next year – and my bike fitted that category perfectly. My mates who raced said I should have a go so I did a few practice sessions at Knockhill pre-season. I didn’t even need to have a race licence, I just showed up, paid my money and went out on track. It cost a fiver for the morning and a fiver for the afternoon. Top value!
I really enjoyed it and decided that I might as well have a crack at racing just to see what it was all about. But I have to come clean here and admit that my first ever race wasn’t actually at Knockhill as most people think and as I’ve told everyone over the years. I said I’d won my first ever race because it looked good on my CV and to a certain extent it was true because I did win my first race at Knockhill. But my first actual attempt at racing was at Carnaby racetrack just north of Bridlington in the north of England the weekend before my Knockhill debut. It was just a wee white lie that sounded good when I was trying to get sponsorship so I don’t mind admitting it now. May I take this opportunity to apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused!
I went out in the first practice session at Carnaby which was for production bikes and race bikes together, and I soon started passing some of the proper race bikes through the corners on my little RD350.
Obviously, they would blast past me on the straights again because they were so much faster but then I’d get them back at the next corner. After a few laps of this I realised I was going okay. Strangely enough I wasn’t nervous at all, even going into the first corner of my first race which should have been a very scary experience with everyone fighting for the same piece of track, elbows and knees everywhere. I was so pumped up that I didn’t care if I crashed or died or anything. I suppose I must have had some kind of natural feel for it; either that or God was on my side because there was no reason why I should have known what I was doing. It just happened and I somehow managed to make it round to the finish and in a pretty respectable position too.
I finished third in the 500cc production class at Carnaby among some pretty hot riders and I knew who they were because I’d been to Carnaby with the Rae brothers before. There were riders like Geoff Crust (who’d later become my mechanic), Charlie Corner, Curt Langan and Gordon Allott and they were all really hard racers.
I remember coming home with this little wooden plaque with ‘Carnaby 3rd’ written on it and I kept it in my pocket for a week. I don’t know how many times a day I would get it out of my pocket at work and just look at it. I couldn’t believe I had actually won something, even though I hadn’t won the race. I’ve still got that plaque to this day and it’s the best trophy I’ve ever won.
I didn’t get any money for racing at Carnaby (in fact it cost me £15 to enter and £5 in fuel) and later that year they even stopped giving out those plaques and replaced them with certificates. No comparison. I loved my little plaque.
The effect of that first race meeting on me was incredible and very difficult to explain. I was on a high for a week afterwards and totally hooked. If I’d finished last it might have been a different story but then again, I’m really good at justifying things to myself so I’d probably have just thought ‘Right, next time I’ll try not to be last’ and kept working away at it. But I got third place and was just over the moon.
I didn’t race against my friends and travelling companions Alistair and Stewart because they were in the pukka racing classes but I’m not sure what they thought after I’d done so well in my first race. They sort of congratulated me through gritted teeth but even if they did feel a bit put out as I suspected, they could still fall back on the fact that they were riding in the pure racing classes while I was in the less prestigious production class. I suppose in a way, I stole a bit of attention away from them and after they had helped me so much they maybe had a right to feel a bit annoyed. I’d probably have felt the same had the situation been reversed.
Incidentally, I hadn’t gone to Carnaby to avoid having my debut race in front of people who knew me, it’s just that the Raes offered to take my bike in their van so it simply made sense to go. It was a bit too far too ride my RD all the way to England then hope it would be in good enough shape to race, but I used to ride it to Knockhill and race it because it wasn’t too far from Fankerton. The sump of the RD was permanently wired up so all I did when I got to the circuit was take the indicators and number plate off, tape up the lights and it was ready to race. Sometimes I would ride my bike to the circuit, win a few races on it and then ride it home again! And at lunchtimes, I’d often take it for a practice session round the little roads that run past the circuit just to make sure everything was okay. I’m sure the police wouldn’t have been too chuffed to see me with the lights taped up and no indicators but I never got caught.
The week after Carnaby I had my first of many races at Knockhill in Fife, where I finished second in my first event of the day, which was the 500cc production race. I then won the invitation race, which was for the top fifteen in each production class, later on in the afternoon. I was up against bigger bikes like Suzuki GSX1000s and I remember it was future world endurance champion Brian Morrison’s first ever race day. He won the big production class and went on to have a successful career in the British championships and in World Superbike as well as in endurance racing.
I got £70 for that invitation win which was great money considering I was taking home about £80 a week from the electricity board, where I had been working since the beginning of 1981. And I got £40 for finishing second in the proddie race so I took home more than a week’s wages. I mean, the thrill of racing was more than enough but to get money for doing it too? I couldn’t believe it.
My mum was there to see me win that day. By then she had accepted that I was going to go racing anyway and she was never really against it in the way my dad probably would have been.
I actually got a bollocking from Jimmy Rae after that race because I started waving my arms and legs frantically over the finish line when I realised I had won and I suppose he must have thought it was dangerous. I don’t think I was even aware that I was doing it though, because I was so ecstatic.
That night I went down to The Pines pub for a few drinks and danced the night away to Soft Cell and Simple Minds or whatever New Romantic music was being played at the time.
I did the full season of the 500cc Scottish Production Championship in 1981 and at one stage it looked as if I might actually win it. However, lack of experience caught me out a few times, especially in the wet, and I eventually finished second which I suppose was still pretty good for a first attempt.
The championship was only held over three circuits, because that’s all Scotland had to offer. We raced at Knockhill, East Fortune and Beveridge Park in Kirkcaldy and that place was a total nightmare. Donnie McLeod, my future team-mate in the Silverstone Armstrong squad once said you can only sign the entry form for Beveridge Park once and then your hand won’t do it again! He wasn’t far wrong.
It’s a left-handed circuit that runs through a couple of parks and it’s pretty fast, certainly too fast for the state of the track and the number of trees and obstacles round about it. A lot of people got killed there and it just wasn’t fit to race on. On one of the corners you had to stick your head through a hedge because that was the racing line. But the classic corner was the one that had the main road as the run off area! If you overshot, you went onto the main road, round a roundabout and then back onto the track again. It was totally mad. I had always wanted to do that just for a laugh because I had seen lots of sidecars doing it but at the same time I was always after a decent result so I never got round to doing it. Knowing me I’d probably have got lost and gone right into town!
I also raced at some events in the north of England like Silloth, which was an airfield circuit about fifteen miles west of Carlisle and where Steve Hislop’s brother Gary was tragically killed. I won the 500 Production Club Championship there in my first year, which I was pretty chuffed with. Croft was another English circuit I raced at and I actually won there on a proper racing bike. I rode a Yamaha TZ350 which belonged to a guy named Alex Beith who ran a car auction business in Glasgow and who I had gotten to know quite well. He was going to sell the bike and knew I was doing all right at the racing so he said ‘What about racing it to help me sell it?’ So I rode it at Knockhill and finished third, then I won on it at Silloth and then again at Croft so the year ended on a high note for me – and the bike sold straight after that race at Croft too.
It was a nice bike to ride because it had a Spondon chassis and it handled really well. After riding production bikes, I couldn’t believe the power of the thing – I thought it was going to pull my arms off. A lot of riders feel like that when they get on a real race bike for the first time and I was no exception, it was just awesome. My Yamaha RD350 probably had a top speed of around 110mph and it didn’t really accelerate very fast either so the lightness and the power of the TZ350 came as a real shock to me. I hadn’t even sat on it until I got to Knockhill for the race meeting and in those days we only got ten minutes of practice to set the bikes up so that was all the time I had on it before I raced. I knew there and then that I had to get a proper racing bike for myself. They were just in a different league and made the RD feel really slow and boring.
That first year in 1981 I raced at about twenty meetings and got twelve wins, either in proper races or in qualifying heats so it was a pretty successful season for me. I also had my very first crash when a guy called Bernie Harrower hit me from behind and punted me off down Duffus Dip at Knockhill but I wasn’t hurt. I ended up having numerous crashes that year but never got badly injured and it certainly didn’t upset me mentally. In fact, I thought it was really exciting, like when you broke an arm at school and you could show off your plaster and get everyone to sign it. I started building up this idea of invincibility that was really dangerous I suppose. Even so, it lasted a long time, right through until 1986 when I broke my leg badly at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire. That soon snapped me out of it. But then again, I had always wanted to have a steel plate in my leg too, so I eventually got my wish granted. And I’ve kept the plate to go with my little wooden plaque from Carnaby.
The social side of life in the paddock in those early days was also quite good because I didn’t have any preparation to do on my bike. I filled it with fuel, kicked the tyres and that was about it unless there was any accident damage that needed to be repaired. Pirn Fleming, Bob Mac-Intyre’s old mechanic, took the engine apart halfway through the season and just put it back together again. The idea was to match the ports up but he said they were fine when he took it apart. It just ran all year without any problems, which is a good advert for the reliability of RDs.
As far as tyres went, I only changed them when they looked like they were really worn down to the canvas. I maybe got through three or four sets all season, which is much less than a top rider today would use in one qualifying session! The rules said we had to run treaded tyres so the more wear on them the better because then I thought they were more like proper racing slicks.
Depending on where the race was and when everyone finished work, the Rae brothers and myself would usually set off in the van on a Friday. We’d find a local pub, have a few beers and then fight in the back of the van over space and covers until everyone nodded off.
As far as food went, we managed to heat up simple things like tomato soup on a little stove but usually we just survived on bacon butties and chips from vans. Quality!
Despite the glamorous image of modern GP bike racing, being a racer at club circuits in the early ‘80s didn’t exactly increase my bird-pulling power. I think the image then was still of black leather-jacketed, greasy-arsed bikers, but I did all right on the girl front anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I was no Tom Cruise but I got by. My racing mates and I would sometimes tell girls that we were bike racers but then I’m sure they’d heard all sorts of bullshit like that before, like ‘Hi, I’m an astronaut’ or ‘Hi, I’m a racing driver’ so I don’t think they listened to us anyway. There were a few stalker types who went to Knockhill every week wanting to get off with racers but they never seemed to come in our direction, which is probably just as well. If they had spent the night in the back of our van there would have been more chance of them getting a kicking than getting snogged!
People started buying me drinks when I started doing well so that was good. It got to the point where I was going out with money in my pocket but never had to spend it because everyone insisted on buying me drinks! Result. I was pretty well looked after that way and I even got sponsorship from a local Denny pub called Whispers. After my first year they gave me £500 in cash which was mega and I got free Bacardi and Cokes every time I went there. All I had to do in return was put the pub’s name on my van.
I think everyone could tell I was getting really serious about racing as I was spending all my money on it.
I remember getting my name in the paper for the first time in 1981 which was quite cool too. It was the Falkirk Herald and they probably spelt my name wrong. Over the years I’ve been Neil or Nyall or Nail and MacKenzie or McKenzie or any other variation you could think of. I’ve even been called Niall Armstrong by TV commentator Chris Carter but that was understandable because I was riding an Armstrong bike at the time – or maybe he thought I was a space cadet!
The other thing is where I come from. I’ve read that I’m from Falkirk, Denny, Stirling, Dunblane, Doune, Scunthorpe and everywhere except where I’m actually from which is Fankerton. Once on TV, Murray Walker even said I was from Bolton in England!
But it was great to get in the papers anyway and I still have a scrap-book with all those early cuttings, most of which were collected by my mum. I think she was quite proud of me after that first season. She was a friend of the Rae family and they told her that I was pretty good and that she should be proud of me. Mum was particularly friendly with Jimmy Rae’s sister Margaret as they had grown up together, and Margaret followed my career with great enthusiasm right up until my last race in 2001.
After I’d been racing bikes all day, I’d usually go straight to The Pines for a pint or three before going home. My mum always used to wait up for me after a race as I suppose she didn’t know if she still had a son or not, yet I’d be down at the local pub without a care in the world.
Once the pub shut, I’d normally head home unless the Mackenzie charm had borne some fruit with the ladies. I didn’t have a car and couldn’t take girls home so I either had to borrow a mate’s car or just walk them home via the bus shelter, but I’d normally get home about 11.30pm and mum would be waiting to see if I was still alive. More often than not, I’d be half-cut and would insist on talking her through the whole day. She’d sit there and listen patiently and I thought she was totally engrossed even though she probably just wanted to go to sleep! For years I thought she was sitting up to hear all my tales of derring-do on the racetrack but then I realised she had only waited up to see if I was still alive and in one piece. Bless her.
During 1981 I developed an interest in Grand Prix racing and my first hero was Kenny Roberts who had already been three times world champion at that point. I liked Randy Mamola too, and he would later become a good friend and even nicknamed me ‘Spuds’ Mackenzie after the dog in the Budweiser adverts. I had no negative feelings towards Barry Sheene but he was such a massive ‘name’ that it was almost difficult to think of him as a bike racer. As far as I was concerned, he was a mainstream celebrity. To me, Roberts and Mamola were just pure bike racers and I liked that. And at that time they were beating Sheene so they were the men for me. But Sheene later gave me some good advice when I got into the 500 GP scene in 1986. I met him in London at a dinner and I had just signed for Honda. He told me not to get involved with any management companies (who usually take around twenty per cent of earnings), just to deal with things myself and that was a good piece of advice that I adhered to mostly over the years. There’s a lot of people in this game who just want to jump on the bandwagon as soon as you have a bit of success and Sheene knew that better than most because he had such a high profile so he was worth listening to.
He also told me to invest everything I had in property in London back then. I thought he was a bit off the mark with that one but it shows how wrong you can be.
It may not sound terrific, but I had another result in 1981 that I was particularly proud of; a fifth place in the national Yamaha Pro-Am Championship when it came to Knockhill. This was the series that would later help me to make a name for myself and it showed me that even in my first year, I had what it took to mix it with some very good national riders. As I said, I finished fifth but I started from the back of the grid and I know I could have won that race if I hadn’t run out of laps. There were some good riders in that championship like Kenny Irons and Kevin Mitchell so I knew I was doing something right. I must have been because I broke the record for losing my orange novice jacket (having competed in nine national races) quicker than anyone else in Scotland, and as far as I’m aware, I still hold that record.
For me, the high points of my first year of racing were the third place at Carnaby and then winning my first race the following week at Knockhill. It could have been bad for me, winning so early on, because I might have very easily gone downhill after that. But it just gave me the kind of jumpstart that I needed to know that I wanted to race and although I enjoyed the whole experience of racing because it was so much fun, for me the climax was winning. If that hadn’t been the case, I might have given it ten years or so but winning is what makes it more special, and I knew inside that I wanted it more than those types of guys who just show up and race as a hobby. I realised I was getting serious when I started pretending to the other riders that I was just there to enjoy it but deep down I wasn’t – I wanted to go further than that. I wanted to win. I also realised that I might be onto something financially because in one weekend I could make more money than I did all week working for the electricity board. I was beginning to envisage a career in racing.
With my first racing season over, I was still working my normal job labouring with the South of Scotland Electricity Board and trying to make plans for racing in 1982. But then something happened which I didn’t expect and which upset me massively but with hindsight, it was actually good for me.
I thought I would be able to go racing with the Rae brothers again in 1982, using their van to get to meetings. But in November we were all sitting in their garage chatting and one of them asked me what my plans were for the next season. I told him I was going to race the RD again and maybe try and get a race bike. I presumed they would let me chuck my bike in the back of their van again but they flatly refused. They said their dad didn’t want to take my bike again. They had helped me as a favour initially and I suppose I shouldn’t have just presumed they would take me but I was absolutely devastated and nearly in tears when they told me. I knew I wasn’t family or anything but at the same time, I had their garage logos on my leathers and stuff all that season so I felt I was giving something back, even if it wasn’t that much. Who knows?
Anyway, it’s probably fair to say that my relationship with the Rae family cooled for a while after they refused to take my bike to meetings, but I certainly didn’t hold any grudges once I had gotten over the initial disappointment and we never actually fell out or anything daft. I walked home from their house that night with my tail between my legs and was very close to crying. But it all worked out for the best, as these things often do, because at some point I needed to get myself a van anyway and that was the incentive I needed to do something about it. There was no prospect of getting one at that point though, because I just didn’t have the money.
At about the same time, my mate Craig Feeney had received compensation for his bike accident and we had already discussed the possibility of him buying me a race bike. But when his big brother Wullie heard about my transport problems he said he’d get me a van (a Bedford CF to be precise). Wullie, his mum, and his wife Marian were great supporters throughout my Career. Another brother Alan organised a sweep at work every week to raise some cash and he started bringing me back between £30 and £50 a week which was fantastic. I opened an account and paid everything in there and showed Alan the books so he knew I wasn’t spending it on anything else.
His dad had a haulage business and he said I could use his premises to work on my bike and he also gave me some work with the firm to help make ends meet. They were all brilliant and in just a few weeks I had gone from an apparently no-hope situation to being pretty much sorted out for the coming season.
At this point, I was also learning a lot more about how a bike works, which would later stand me in good stead. I have always had a good understanding of how mechanical things work and although I’m no engine tuner and I don’t claim to be able to set a bike up perfectly, I was learning all the time at that point. My dad was always interested in mechanical things, which helped, but I must admit I’m better with two-strokes than four-strokes. I only found out recently that the piston in a four-stroke bike goes up and down twice before it fires! Shame on me.
For the 1982 season, I also enlisted the help of a mechanic called Graeme Bell. I met him at Knockhill and we became friends and he did a lot of work for me in ‘82 with no financial reward so I owe him a big thanks for all his help.
I was all set to contest the Scottish 500 Production Championship again and I also had a ‘proper’ race bike as well; a Yamaha TZ250 loaned to me by Craig Feeney, complete with a spares kit, spare wheels, the lot. I also realised that I had to break out of the Scottish scene that year if my career was to progress any further. Too many talented Scottish riders get stuck in the routine of just racing at Knockhill and East Fortune. If they’re happy with that then fine, but if you want to progress, you have to take on stiffer competition in a national championship so that’s what I set out to do in 1982. Only problem was, I was diabolical whenever I raced in England. I knew I needed to be out of my depth in order to raise my game but I didn’t realise I’d have to bloody drown before I could learn to swim!
The English circuits were so much bigger and more professional than the ones we had in Scotland but that never really overwhelmed me. However I was positively underwhelmed with my results. To begin with I was finishing anywhere between twelfth and twenty-fifth though at the time I didn’t realise that the TZ250 was crap. It was quite well prepared but it was an older model and it just didn’t run very well. It handled awfully too because I had no idea how to set it up properly so some of the blame has to rest on my shoulders.
Back home though, I was doing pretty well and winning most of the races I entered on the RD350 and eventually I won the 500cc Scottish Production Championship. On the TZ250, I started off quite lowly but towards the end of the season I was winning races on it too. Those results reminded me that I could still actually ride after the hard lessons I had learnt while racing in England.
So many people had told me that going to England was the wrong thing to do but you have to race with superior riders to learn how to go faster. The proof is easy to see as most British riders who have competed at world level come back home to the UK and win races and titles. Jamie Whitham, Neil Hodgson, John Reynolds and James Haydon are just a few examples.
One of the highlights of 1982 for me was to be during another Pro-Am round at Donington Park. It was a televised race and I finished second in front of the TV cameras which was great exposure for me. That was the first time I ever saw myself on television but my mum wasn’t pleased about it, as I was actually off work for eight weeks at the time because I had crashed at Donington earlier in the year and torn my knee and couldn’t walk. When my mum turned on the TV and saw me – racing she was cringing because she thought everyone else back home would see me and not be too impressed that I was racing motorbikes when I should have been at work. And because we both worked at the electricity board she was beside herself about what our boss might say if he found out!
Anyway, I was so excited about getting second place in a national race that I ran to the phone box at Donington’s Redgate Lodge to call my mum but someone was on the phone so I went to the lavatory while I waited. It wasn’t until I’d got my leathers off that I discovered I was sitting in the ladies’ loo. I heard women speaking and then realised there were no urinals so finally put two and two together. Very embarrassing, but I was so excited I didn’t know what I was doing.
Throughout my career I always looked forward to seeing the TV coverage if I’d had a good race somewhere but that first time was a bit special. All the way home to Scotland in the van it was all I could think about.
I thought that the next round of the Yamaha Pro-Am Championship could work out even better for me. It was at Knockhill and I had been waiting for a whole year to take on the Pro-Am boys on my home turf again after finishing fifth from the back of the grid in 1981. This time I won the race and it was my first national win even though the TV cameras weren’t there to record it. I suppose Knockhill must have been too far away for them. But it was enough to convince me that I could maybe challenge for the title in 1983 so I lined myself up for another full season of Pro-Am. By the end of that season, I wanted to prove I was a pro and not just another amateur.
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