11th August 2001 - Brands Hatch

After the fiasco with my brakes at Cadwell I was determined not to have the same problems at Brands. I sent the callipers off to my local dealer for a complete overhaul to try and sort the problem out. Due to other commitments I couldn't pick them up so I had a friend get them for me. I was a bit frustrated to find that not only had they not refilled and bled the braking system they hadn't even included the washers used to connect the brake lines to the callipers.

After a mad rush around to get some more washers I finally got everything in place ready to put it all back together on the Friday evening before the race. Unfortunately all my good planning, ahem, was for nothing as my torque wrench decided this would be a good time to give up the ghost. The upshot being that I broke off the banjo bolt that connects the hose to the calliper - Doh! Nothing else for it but get to the circuit early and hope someone had some spares.

Yet again A & R Racing saved the day and I managed to connect the brakes, fill them with fluid and make an average job of bleeding the system in time for scrutineering, with only minutes to spare! It was then a mad dash to get out for practice before the side cars are let out. Still being unsure about the brakes I didn't brake at all on the first lap, braked gently on the second lap and only slightly more on the third and final practice lap. I was quite pleased to see that my third lap was down in the 1:00.xx time frame, a whole seven seconds faster than I had managed the last time I was here.

Race 1 - Rookie 600

After another quick attempt to bleed the brakes again it was time to go out to play. Started from 23rd place on the 6th row I made an okay start and made up a couple of places on the first corner and managed to avoid the worst of the usual bundle in to the first couple of corners. Had a minor paint swapping exercise with someone going in to Druids but managed to get away with it. Made up another couple of places on the way out of Clearways and headed off to Paddock Hill.

Had a minor rear end slide on the way down the hill which I should have paid more attention to seeing what was to come. Sitting in a respectable late teens or early twenties position the race was red flagged as Julian Dawe had binned it in spectacular style coming on to the start/finish straight. We were held at Surtees for about fifteen minutes whilst they picked him and his bike up off the circuit. Now we were on cold tyres for the restart so thought I ought to take it fairly easy for the first lap or so.

As usual the red mist came down and I made a pretty good start by my standards and passed the row in front quite easily. Went up the inside of most of the next row going in to Paddock Hill bend for the first time and then it all went quiet. I don't actually know quite what happened next - I remember thinking about reaching my braking point, then a a couple of seconds wondering why it was hard to breathe, shortly followed by me spitting what I assume was gravel out of my mouth. The first thing I remember after that was waking up in the medical centre strapped to a board.

As you can see from the picture above I lost it big time and managed to slide almost the entire way down Paddock Hill bend. The thing that was to prove my undoing was that Mandy had managed to crash some where behind me and whilst my bike slid off in to the gravel trap hers simply accelerated down the hill and, if the stories I'm hearing are true, hit me pretty hard on it's way past. The picture shows me sliding on the right hand side and Mandy, plus her bike, sliding on the left. You can imagine how fast the bike must have been going when it hit!

I was eventually transferred to Sidcup Hospital by ambulance and, still strapped to the board in case I had neck injuries, had to sit there while they cut my leathers off. If I wasn't in such agony I would have protested much harder but that was the only way they could x-ray me to make sure my neck was okay. After several hours I was unstrapped and could at least move around a little for another set of x-rays to make sure I hadn't broken my pelvis or anything else. Turned out I had broken my collar bone but I could have told them that simply by how much it hurt and the strange feeling I got whenever I used my right arm. The latest treatment for for broken collarbones is, er, absolutely nothing - You simply have to put your arm in a sling and live with the pain for between six and twelve weeks.

By this time I wasn't really sure what was going on as the pain in my lower back was really bad and, more to the point, I had no clothes with me, my keys and van were still at Brands Hatch and there was no way I could even sit up on my own had they managed to get me home. After being brutally man handled in to a chair I managed to find a doctor who understood my plight and admitted me to hospital so they could keep track of my lower back and kidney pain.

It became apparent after a few days in hospital that I had bruised my spine, my kidney and had some, hopefully temporary, nerve damage to my lower back and abdomen so that most of that area was fairly numb. I spent a little under two weeks in hospital being given high doses of morphine and other pain killers before being released back in to the real world to fend for myself. At the time of writing I've still got enough morphine to last me the week but I have to go to see my GP to see whether they'll give some more.

At least being out I got to see my gear for the first time. My crash helmet is only fit for the bin and my leathers need a bit of an overhaul after being attacked by a nurse armed with a pair of scissors in the hospital. The bruising to my chest suggest that I was wise to wear a chest protector as I think it saved me a few broken ribs and despite my heavy duty back protector I still managed to do myself quite a lot of damage to my lower back. It's a shame really as had I not been hit my Mandy's bike I would have probably just broken my collar bone and been up and about much sooner. At the end of the day it has proven my belief that there really is no substitute for lots of leather and good quality armour when it comes to crashing motorbikes. Now you can see why they insist on decent equipment for track days and similar events.

I've got a number of bruises, the biggest being on my left hip as you can see in the picture - Bear in mind this was taken more than two weeks after the event. All the others are either too personal ;-) or just rather unpleasant so I'm not going to make them public. I may, or may not, have broken a couple of ribs as it hurts quite a lot when I breathe deeply. It's rather difficult to tell from the x-rays as you can't really differentiate between old breaks and new ones - And I have broken a few over the past few years ;-) I still have some nerve damage to my lower back and can't get out of bed without taking morphine first thing in the morning. Having said that in a few weeks I expect the only memories of this will be my collar bone and what's left of my crash helmet

My bike survived relatively unscathed despite filling up the fairing with most of the gravel trap. The plastic took the worst of it and aside from a broken rear brake lever, a broken clip on and a bent exhaust hangar bracket there doesn't seem to be much else wrong with it. Well, nothing I can see from the cursory look I've managed so far - Not a lot I can do about it anyway with one arm in a sling and not being able to bend over properly.

A strange weekend really, after all the trouble getting my bike ready for the race and the ease with which I managed to get down to lapping in the 1:00.xx mark after only a few practice laps this should have been a good race. As it was it put paid to my racing for the rest of the year and caused me to miss at least three weeks of work.

Kicking myself really as I had set myself a target of 0:57.xx a lap which I think I could have managed very easily. Many of the guys I've been finishing alongside recently got down to the 0:53.xx/0:54.xx - Doh!

It hasn't put me off though and if there was any way I could be fit enough to race in the last couple of rounds this year I would be there in a shot but I suspect my collar bone will take longer to heal than that - And I probably won't have got my bike back together. I guess the Snoopy cartoon (click on it to go to the full cartoon strip) sums it up, and I didn't even get a trophy ;-)