Niall Mackenzie: The Autobiography

Once I had left my job and started working with Armstrong however, I went to Blackburn and moved in with the family of a fellow racer called Geoff Fowler, so that I didn’t have to travel up and down from Scotland so much.

We had some top laughs on Friday nights at a pub just outside Blackburn called The New Inns. The usual protocol was to get drunk in there and then go skinny-dipping in the nearby reservoir. A bit dangerous looking back on it but we all survived somehow.

Then on Saturday nights it was off for a boogie at The Peppermint Place where I was thrown out of more times than I can remember. I was once thrown backwards through a set of double doors and down a whole flight of stairs just for being Scottish and obnoxious!

At the same time, I must have been getting a bit more professional because I started running to get fit. There were still no special diets or anything, in fact we lived off whatever we could find in the local Spar shop and a regular diet of Lancashire corned beef hash which Geoff’s dad seemed to make for us every night.

But at least I was running which I hadn’t done when I was working, because I didn’t really have the time or the energy. It goes to show how much the media informs us these days about diets and fitness because most people are quite clued up about it now but at that time I did some pretty strange things to try and get fit. One of the daftest was my ‘sauna theory.’ I thought sweating buckets in a sauna was an easy way to get fit but unfortunately, I didn’t have a sauna so I had to improvise. I sat in my van with as many layers of clothing on as possible, all topped off with a big duffel coat then turned the heater on full blast for hours on end! I used to drive all the way to race meetings in England like that thinking I was a regular little Rocky Balboa! Six hundred-mile round trips in the mobile Mackenzie sauna. Man, that van must have smelt bad and unsurprisingly enough, it didn’t do me much good in the fitness stakes either.

My diet of curries and lager almost got me into trouble as well that year and I was lucky not to lose my Armstrong ride soon after getting it. When I competed in my first race for the team at Knockhill, I missed morning practice because I was locked up in the police station! I had gone out on Friday night and got a bit carried away in the local Indian restaurant. I was dancing on the tables, and generally being a bit messy and noisy and the next thing I knew, the police arrived to take me away. I had become an Indian takeaway! They locked me up overnight and didn’t let me out until lunchtime on Saturday hence I missed Saturday morning practice and that obviously didn’t impress the team too much. It was a very dodgy start to my Armstrong career and I was lucky, and grateful, not to get sacked.

The Armstrong deal aside, another big bonus for me in 1983 was winning the Pro-Am World Cup race at Donington which was shown on TV. It was weird because I was racing with Alan Carter again and he waved me through as a joke because he must have thought he would just come straight past me at the next corner. He didn’t and I won the race, so it was a bit daft of him but that was Alan all over. I suppose he was just messing about but I was pretty serious and I certainly wasn’t going to pass up the chance of winning a World Cup race on live TV.

I also rode in my first race abroad in 1983 in another Pro-Am World Cup meeting at Hockenheim in Germany and came fourth which I was quite happy with. All in all, it had been a pretty good year as I ended up with second place in the Pro-Am Championship and I had enjoyed occasional success on the Armstrong in the 250cc class although the bike broke down too often to allow me to have any consistent results. I won some races in Scotland on the Armstrong and had a win at Knockhill and a fourth at Donington on a 350cc Armstrong that the factory had built for me. But the most important development of the year for me was that I had become a professional racer and for the first time I could spend all week concentrating on the race ahead instead of having to go to work. Having said that, I actually went back to work at a plant hire company called Dundaff Draining along with my mate Wullie McKay during the winter because it was some extra cash in my pocket and I had too much spare time on my hands. I’ve always liked working anyway, just because it’s a good laugh if you’ve got the right sort of mates around you and I don’t like being idle.

Armstrong had committed to backing me for a full season’s racing in 1984 rather than having me just as a development rider-come-racer. I knew they were serious about winning the British championship so things were looking better than they had ever done for me at the end of a season. For me, Armstrong was the team to ride for at that point because they had their own factory right here in Britain, they built their own bikes, and they could respond quickly to any changes I wanted made. I didn’t even look anywhere else for the 1984 season, not least because I suspected Armstrong would provide my route into Grand Prix racing which was where I really wanted to be.

Also, I was going to be the sole UK-based factory rider for Armstrong in ‘84. Tony Head, who had recovered from his Donington crash which gave me my big break, was given bikes to run in his own private team rather than being the factory’s official rider.

The other exciting thing about Armstrong at that time was that they had built a carbon-fibre-framed bike that I had tested in the second half of 1983 and would race in 1984. It was going to be the first bike of its kind to be raced and I was very much looking forward to it. In fact, that bike was largely the reason why Armstrong landed government funding to go racing in the first place. The British government had provided a grant to develop carbon-fibre-framed bikes and the big carrot for them was that Armstrong said they were going to build an all-British 500cc Grand Prix racer. With Barry Sheene still making headline news in those days, there was a lot of support for the idea of a unique British bike that could take on the world so it was a shame it never really happened. I’ll explain why a little later.

My salary for 1984 was increased to £6000 and on top of that I got prize money and bonuses for winning as well as any personal sponsorship which I could sort out but there wasn’t much of that about back then, just a few quid here and there for wearing helmets and leathers.

Still, the new season was going to be another big step forward and as it turned out, my fourth year of racing would see me ride in my first ever Grand Prix. My dreams were coming true at last.

CHAPTER FOUR Stealing Tomatoes (#ulink_1ad6344f-f5ed-5f0b-a955-0717d779daa1)

The aim for 1984 was to win the 250cc British title on the 250 Armstrong with the Austrian Rotax engine and to win the 350cc British championship on the 350 machine that housed Armstrong’s own in-line twin cylinder engine.

The downside of those commitments was that I would have to give up racing my beloved RD350LC that I had raced since the beginning of my career. I didn’t mind too much as the Pro-Am series had achieved its purpose as far as I was concerned, by getting my name known, and it was on the slide anyway. It had run its course, but the extra prize money would have been useful because it had become pretty easy money for me. It was great fun too but I needed to be more out of my depth again if I was to keep improving my riding and I knew I still had a long way to go in that department. Because Armstrong paid me £6000 for the ‘84 season I stopped working in the winter to supplement my racing – and I haven’t had a proper job since!

As well as contesting the British championships in 1984, I also took part in my first ever road race at the North West 200 in Northern Ireland. The organisers approached me about racing there and I had a spare weekend in the calendar so I thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t know much about the course but I’d heard that it wasn’t as dangerous as some of the other pure roads circuits even though the lap record averaged around 115mph. It’s mostly long straights and slow corners which isn’t as bad as having lots of fast corners lined with trees.

Although I enjoyed the NW200, I was never interested in doing the Isle of Man TT. I thought it was a great event but it just didn’t appeal to me as a rider. It’s not because it was dangerous because at that point in my career I honestly didn’t care about getting hurt – I never thought it would happen to me. It’s just that I wanted to get into GPs and I knew the TT wasn’t the way to go about it.

But the North West was great fun, or at least it was once the racing began as I almost spent the whole weekend in a police cell! I was walking down the street in Portrush when 1 spotted the guys from Dunlop tyres through the glass front of a restaurant. Instinctively, I dropped my trousers and pants and gave the boys a big moonie and then the whole world went dark. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but it turns out that the local Royal Ulster Constabulary police saw me mooning, threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into the back of a police car. I thought it was the Ku-Klux-Klan or something, until I got to the station. Eventually, the Dunlop boys came down (after wetting themselves laughing) and vouched for my character so I was released in time for the races.

I remember being really bored in practice because there was too much time to think on those long straights. It was getting tedious just holding the throttle to the stop and going in a straight line. But apart from being boring, it also gave me too much time to think about things that could go wrong. What would happen if the gearbox seized? What would happen if the engine seized and I couldn’t get the clutch in? I was thinking about all that sort of stuff in practice but the actual races were great fun, slipstreaming all the other riders for miles, flat out. I treated the course like a big, short circuit because I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know how you were supposed to ride a pure road race properly and I suppose I still don’t but I did all right, finishing second to Kevin Mitchell in the wet 350cc race then coming home fifth in the dry 250cc event. I had been in second place and was dicing with Steve Cull but landed in a hedge on the last lap and remounted for fifth.

But the best thing about the North West was the atmosphere. We practised in the evenings then we all went out and got drunk and slept in late in the mornings. It was brilliant and the Irish hospitality and the fans were just fantastic; everybody bought me drinks from the moment I arrived!

I got to know the king of all road racers, Joey Dunlop, that year too but it was at Snetterton and not at the North West. He was riding Honda’s new RS250 and we had a great battle until I fell on the last lap. Our paths didn’t cross very often but I had a few pints with him over the years and I think we had a mutual respect for each other. I certainly had huge respect for him.

It may have been my fourth year of racing in 1984 but I was still crashing quite a lot and we had some reliability problems with the Armstrong, which meant we didn’t get the results we wanted in the 250 class. I still wasn’t too hot on setting bikes up either, which didn’t help matters. But even though I was crashing, I never seemed to get hurt and I didn’t really miss any races because of injury right up until 1986.

Looking back, the crowds were very poor at British championship meetings in 1984 but I hadn’t known any different so I didn’t particularly notice at the time. As far as I was concerned, winning a British title was another step forwards and that’s all I was thinking about. One figure that was banded about was that for every hundred people that came to see a race in 1980, only twenty-eight were coming in 1984. But there was a lot of unemployment and people didn’t have a lot of cash to spend on leisure pursuits like going to bike races. It shows how well the sport is doing in the UK now though with crowds of up to twenty thousand regularly turning out for British Superbike meetings.

However, one of the main reasons I have to remember 1984 is because I competed in my first Grand Prix at Silverstone on 5 August. The whole weekend was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and I went from highs to lows more times than I can remember. When I showed up at the circuit, I didn’t even have an entry to race so I sat in the organisers’ office all day and finally got an entry at the last minute when a foreign rider didn’t turn up. Back then, if riders didn’t show by 8pm on Thursday night they were disqualified so that was how I got my entry and that alone felt like winning the race for me. It meant I was actually going to be on the same grid as my heroes like Carlos Lavado, Martin Wimmer and Christian Sarron. I knew GPs were where I wanted to be, especially 500 GPs, but I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. All I could think was that if I kept telling myself enough times that it would happen, then it might just come true.

As well as being my first Grand Prix, it was also my first time at Silverstone so I had to learn the track as well. I remember being amazed that I was on the same track as the big boys but I had to force myself to concentrate and do the best job I could. I qualified for the race which I felt was an achievement in itself but joy soon turned to despair as I finished the race twenty-eighth and dead last. It was the one and only time in my twenty-year career that I finished last and I was absolutely gutted.

I knew the bike wasn’t nearly as fast as the others out there, and I was getting passed a lot on the straights. It didn’t help that Silverstone was such a fast track either but it was still demoralising even if being last wasn’t completely my fault.

After the British GP, I got an entry for the Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp on 12 August but I had to fund the trip myself as Armstrong would only supply the bikes but wouldn’t pay for the trip. It did my confidence a power of good though because I rode much better there than I did at the British GP. The circuit’s not so fast for one thing and I just liked the layout of the place. I qualified in twenty-fourth place and was on the pace in the race but my bike broke down after twenty-one of the twenty-five laps. Still, I had laid to rest the Silverstone demons by turning in a half decent performance and at least I didn’t finish last again.

The last Grand Prix of the year was at Mugello in Italy so me and my mechanic decided to drive down from the Swedish GP to Italy and try to get an entry. Bad move. Every racer had turned up so I was refused an entry, which meant we’d wasted all the time, money and effort it had taken to drive there. Still, at least it was a little warmer.

The riders’ representative at the event, Mike Trimby, just looked at me as if I was stupid (which I was) and couldn’t believe I had travelled all that way without an entry. It was a ridiculous situation and I was really upset. Then to make matters worse, I was plagued with a medical complaint below the belt that had been quietly incubating since the British GP weekend and decided to flare up while I was already at my lowest ebb. I suppose it was punishment for being a naughty boy.

I tried to solve the problem by dousing my privates with Old Spice but it was a pretty itchy trip back to England all the same. And when I did get back and went for a consolatory pint, I saw fellow racer Kenny Irons who gave me a knowing look that told me he was suffering with the same problem. After all, we had both liaised with the same girl – though on separate occasions I hasten to add!

When you ride in GPs, you realise just how much faster all the riders are compared to the guys back home in the UK. The plus side of that is that when you get back to racing at home you realise you can push that much harder than everyone else.

As a result of this new-found confidence, I won my first national title – the Circuit Promoters 350cc British Championship. Although the 350cc class wasn’t as prestigious as the 250 series, it was still a national title and proved I was still getting better and moving forward which was my main aim.

I didn’t have such good fortune in the 250cc class partly because I did a bit of crashing and partly because we were tuning the bike so much to make it competitive that it broke down too often. But strangely enough, my best result of the season, and in fact the best result of my career to date came on the 250cc machine at the Super Prestigio race at Calafat in Spain at the end of the year. Many of the top 250cc Grand Prix riders were entered including Sito Pons, Martin Wimmer, Juan Garriga and Carlos Cardus but I won the three-leg 250 event overall with a win and two seconds. The track was tight and twisty unlike Silverstone’s fast, flowing layout, which I liked and it also suited the Armstrong.

Unknown to me at the time, my performance pretty much ensured I would get a factory Grand Prix ride with Armstrong the following year. Former GP racer and multiple TT winner Chas Mortimer was to manage the Armstrong effort in 1985 and he had a big influence over my career over the next few years, helping me to improve my riding and making me more streetwise too. He asked me before the last leg in Calafat what I was planning to do in the race. When I said ‘Finish second and take the overall win’ he realised I had finally matured from the crash-happy win or bust merchant he had seen me as and I think that persuaded him to sign me for ‘85.

Speaking of Armstrong, I have a confession to make regarding their three-cylinder, carbon-fibre-framed 500cc project bike. As I said before, the 500 was the real reason why the firm was getting money from the government and because of that, there was a lot of pressure to debut the bike before it was ready. I wheeled it out into the pit lane at Donington in 1984 and posed before the TV cameras. I did actually ride the bike in practice but there was no way it was going to be competitive in the race so we actually stuck yellow number plates (the designated colour for the 500 class) on the 250cc machine and raced that! Even the TV commentators were fooled into thinking it was the 500.

I did a few laps at Brands again at the end of the season on the 500 and that was the last time it was run. It’s in a shed somewhere just outside Preston these days. Shame really, because it was a fantastic looking motorcycle and technically very interesting. Incidentally, it was designed and built by Barry Hart who was the guy who’d built the bike for the 1980 movie Silver Dream Racer starring David Essex.

Anyway, Armstrong’s money was limited after 1984 but they had won a big army contract to make bikes so they decided to rearrange their racing set-up and handed over the team to the owners of the Silverstone racing circuit. The team was then called the Silverstone Armstrong GP Team, and Armstrong supplied the bikes and spares while letting Silverstone run the team and cover costs. The circuit put up about £25,000 which was a lot back then and they also supplied premises for the team so it was a good arrangement. The idea was to contest a full season of 250cc Grands Prix and fit in whatever British championship rounds we could as well on both the 250 and 350cc Armstrongs.

The team’s other sponsor, Dalmac, was a Scottish plant hire firm run by Ali McGregor, Willie Dalrymple and Jock Gibb – the Scottish plant hire Mafia, as we used to call them. They were the best sponsors to have because win, lose or draw, they always insisted we let our hair down on a Sunday night and went out for a few drinks. Well, with those boys it was usually more than a few and dancing on tables was normally compulsory too. Suffice to say there wasn’t much time for feeling depressed on a Sunday night if I’d had a bad result.

My team-mate was to be Donnie McLeod who had gone well in 250 GPs on a private Yamaha. He was also a fellow Scot so I knew we’d be able to have a few laughs along the way and I couldn’t wait to do more GPs as I loved all the travelling.

Everything was a laugh apart from the time I spent on the bike, which I took very seriously. I kept thinking I was going to be ‘found out’ by someone. I mean, I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to play on bikes and have a carry on. I was always waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say ‘Right, the game’s up mate. Time to go back to a real job. We know what you’ve been up to.’ All the way through my career I thought I was going to be rumbled. Even when I put my serious head on to ride the bike, I was still doing it because I wanted to go faster than everyone else so even that didn’t feel like work.

The first Grand Prix in 1985 was the South African at Kyalami and I was twenty-fourth from twenty-eight which wasn’t the best start to the season. I thought I was doing all right in the race because I was with some pretty good riders but then Freddie Spencer (who went on to win both the 250 and 500 titles that year) came past me about half way through the race. I thought ‘Bloody hell, he must have had a bad start’ but then Anton Mang and Mario Rademeyer came past too and it was only then that I realised I was actually being lapped! It really demoralised me. There were no blue flags to let me know I was being lapped and I started getting depressed in the remaining laps but again, it was a really fast circuit so I shouldn’t have let it get to me so much.

At Kyalami, the Armstrong was giving away about 15-20mph to the top bikes, which is a hell of a lot over a full race distance.

I was also in a great deal of pain because of my pale Scottish complexion. I had gone from a freezing Scottish winter into thirty-five degrees of sub-tropical heat in South Africa and my pale blue skin just couldn’t take it. As Billy Connolly says, it took me a while in the sun to go from blue to white and then I just seemed to go lobster red in a matter of minutes. Come race day, I could hardly get my leathers on because of the pain of the sunburn and I was shedding skin like a snake all over the garage floor. I could probably have had an extra set of leathers made out of my own skin! Real Mackenzie reps!

Again, I was out of my depth racing against the GP stars just as I had been when I started racing in British championships but I still knew it was the only way to really improve my riding. But at the next race in Jarama, it started to pay off because I qualified in tenth place, by far my best performance in a GP to date. Then the bike broke after just fourteen laps in the race itself so it was disappointment time again.

At that stage in my career, neither the team members nor I were technically minded enough to have debriefings after a race so we just accepted our result, whatever it was, and packed up the kit. We’d have a quick bitch and a moan then just go for a beer. I was still too young and happy about life to let it get me down and be miserable. I always tried to keep a smile on my face, even when there wasn’t a lot of personal space to be had in the little caravan I shared with my team-mate Donnie McLeod.

I suppose to some people, Donnie could be quite a difficult person to get on with but I tend to get on with most people so we never had any real problems. The pair of us lived in that little caravan for the best part of two years and never had a proper argument so that must say something. He kept his cards fairly close to his chest but he was a level-headed person and very serious at the racetrack although he liked to have a few beers when the racing was over.

But when I first got to know him he would piss me off because he’d finish fifth in a GP and I’d say ‘Fantastic result mate’ but he’d just moan that it wasn’t good enough. I’d have been ecstatic at getting fifth in a GP back then but as I got older, I started thinking like Donnie and was never happy with my results either, always thinking I could have done better so now I know what he meant.

I learnt a lot from Donnie because I was young and daft when we met and I was still treating racing as a bit of a laugh. He was a lot more experienced and serious about his racing and some of that rubbed off on me.

I had to watch my step in the caravan though as Donnie lived life by the clock and he’d have strict routines such as eating lunch at exactly twelve noon and stuff like that. He’d also do things like cut a tomato in half, eat one half, then wrap the other neatly in silver foil and put it back in the fridge. He was very particular about those sorts of things. In the early days, I’d just waltz into the caravan and eat whatever was in the fridge, which used to really annoy him. But I soon realised that I wasn’t allowed to eat his half tomato or his quarter egg because he had very specific plans for them and they didn’t involve me!