Latest / Rusty's Garage / Chris Vermeulen (Part 1)

Transcript

Chris Vermeulen (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:14
I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:29
I'm at home for this episode and my guest is on Queensland's beautiful Sunshine Coast.
0:34
Christopher Mullen has always been around motorcycles, getting his first before he was really even walking.
0:41
It was the beginning of a passionate connection that would take him all around the world and to ride bikes for most of the big Japanese brands.
0:50
He had a very special connection with the late Barry Sheen that you'll hear more about.
0:55
Sadly, Baz lost his battle with cancer the same year that Chris won the world supersport title.
1:02
While Baz never got to see that or Chris's podiums in MotoGP, he would have been immensely proud.
1:09
Even more so of Chris's authenticity, his dedication and the way that he is universally respected in every corner of the sport.
1:18
an Aussie with Dutch ancestry who turned childhood obsession into occupation.
1:25
Yeah, first of all, my grandparents were Dutch.
1:28
My dad's side, my dad's parents, and they emigrated out here after the Second World War.
1:34
And they already had like four kids.
1:37
And when they moved to Australia, they had five more.
1:39
So my dad was actually born in Australia, nine kids, no TVs back then, obviously.
1:43
But they, no, they, and my grandmother is still alive today.
1:49
She's in her nineties.
1:50
My grandfather passed away a few years ago, but very big supporters of mine.
1:55
And yeah, loved watching me race, you know, in the early days, especially when they were both alive.
2:01
My grandfather's a fourth generation baker.
2:04
My dad's a baker as well.
2:05
So he's the fifth generation.
2:06
And I told him that's where it's stopping because I ain't going to be a baker.
2:10
There's no way I'm getting up at midnight or 1am to go and cook bread.
2:12
So there you go.
2:13
Come on, you're a family man now.
2:15
Can you do a mean croissant or something?
2:17
Are you capable of any of that stuff?
2:19
Very basically.
2:20
Yeah.
2:21
No, I did work in the bakery for about a year and a half when I first left school and was starting to race and mum and dad were forking out lots of money for me to go motorbike racing.
2:30
So yeah, I worked in the bakery seven days a week for my old man and he said I was the only person or the first employee he's ever had that ate more than I produced.
2:39
So there you go.
2:39
So I consumed more than I produced.
2:42
Yes, I'm not a good baker.
2:43
You were a liability, hey?
2:45
No, you're not.
2:45
You're an asset, mate.
2:46
You're an asset.
2:46
Now, life has taken you all around the world for racing, but you grew up in Queensland.
2:52
You're back there now.
2:53
I want some more of those early life recollections around family, but more to do with the bike and car side.
3:00
So what was in the garage that dad was perhaps driving when you were younger?
3:03
And what are the first recollections of anything with two wheels for you?
3:09
Look, car-wise, I've got to say I don't know a lot from the early days, but bike-wise, I've still got vivid memories.
3:17
My dad was always into motorbikes, so he had trials bikes.
3:21
He actually did a little bit of road racing in Queensland, lakeside here, and I mean –
3:27
He was older.
3:28
I was just born when he started to race.
3:31
But he was racing guys like Mick Doohan, Scott Doohan, John Allen, some very fast riders in Queensland and 250 proddies.
3:38
And that was when Mick and Scott were just starting.
3:41
So he did a little bit of racing in that era, but obviously a family man by then.
3:45
Yeah.
3:46
But yeah, he loved his trials and his enduro riding.
3:48
And I remember the early days, me having like my first bike, my Peewee 50, or even my push bike, I'd try and ride it up the stairs outside the house at home because I wanted to be like dad.
3:58
I wanted to ride trials and I wanted to, you know, because he was always going over rocks and different things like trials riders do.
4:05
So...
4:05
So that was my sort of first memories of doing anything.
4:09
And we lived on about an acre of land and just riding around in the backyard with my old man, and my sister there on her push bike and me being about four or five years old on a little Peewee 50, you know?
4:20
So that was great things to look back on and think about.
4:24
Just expand a little bit more if you can on that first bike.
4:28
So you said a peewee.
4:28
Was that the first bike?
4:30
And how did it come to be?
4:31
Was it, you know, mum and dad forking out money?
4:34
Was it a Christmas present under the tree?
4:35
What was it?
4:36
So I was born in June 1982.
4:40
Christmas 82, I got my first motorbike.
4:42
My Peewee 50 comes.
4:43
So there you go.
4:44
It came very early.
4:46
So, yeah, Peewees back then had a front brake and a rear brake on the handlebars.
4:51
My dad didn't think that was right.
4:52
He put the rear brake down on the foot.
4:54
And he used to ride with, being a baker, he had time in the day.
4:57
So...
4:58
from being six months or a bit older, he said nearly every day I'd want to get on the motorbike and I'd sit on the front with him and do all the controls.
5:06
And the day I learned to ride my push bike without training wheels, that same day I rode my Peewee on my own and I was almost three years old at that stage.
5:15
So I had a lot of time on the controls, but...
5:18
And look at the kids.
5:20
I look at my kids now riding.
5:21
It's basically just a helmet on a motorbike, you know, pretty much.
5:24
They just sit there and ride along.
5:26
So, yeah, that was the first bike.
5:29
And soon after that, I got on some geared bikes.
5:31
Dad got me a Yamaha TY80 trials bike.
5:35
It was way too big for me.
5:36
I needed a milk crate to stand on to start off, but that was my first geared bike.
5:40
And like, it was the trials bike, you know.
5:42
I wanted to be like my old man who did trials, yeah.
5:44
So were they the early years?
5:46
And was that kind of the direction that you perhaps thought of taking, that you might have gone down the trials path or something early on?
5:51
Well, actually, you know, I didn't do any racing.
5:54
I didn't do any racing on a motorcycle until I was about 11 years old.
5:58
So actually I rode bikes and wanted to do that, but I raced BMX from about – I was about six or seven.
6:06
And then my sister was a couple of years younger than me,
6:08
She raced as well.
6:09
And then because we were going as kids, my dad did a bit of BMX racing in the old fast race, we called it.
6:17
25 and overs.
6:17
It makes me feel really old right now.
6:19
But, yeah, he used to, you know, ride with all the dads and we'd go and do these races around southeast Queensland.
6:25
Yeah.
6:27
And really enjoyed it.
6:28
And that was my first sort of entry to competitive sport.
6:33
I mean, I did soccer for school and I played a bit of tennis and things like that.
6:37
But BMX was like the thing I did outside, did on weekends as well.
6:43
And yeah, and it was just racing that.
6:44
And then when I was about 10 years old, it was, and I was still riding motorbikes for fun.
6:48
It was trying to convince my mum to let me go and do a motorbike race.
6:51
And that was, that was the tricky part.
6:53
I'll bet it was.
6:54
Hey, so were you kind of, and maybe your sister, were you inspired by BMX bandits?
6:59
What was the, what was the bike that you had?
7:01
Was it a Mongoose?
7:03
No, I had a PK Ripper.
7:07
Beautiful.
7:08
PK Ripper.
7:08
PK Ripper.
7:09
Yeah.
7:09
And they had the skinny BMX tires.
7:14
Oh, it was the coolest bike.
7:16
I had a couple of Queensland championship plates.
7:19
Like I made finals, you know, in age group.
7:22
I can't remember what they were.
7:23
I never won one, but I was like third or fifth or whatever.
7:26
And my sister used to race in girls races and it wound me up because I always thought it was easier because they had less competitors and she'd generally finish better than me.
7:34
So if I was fifth and she was third or something, oh, I couldn't stand it, you know, coming home and she's got a better plate than me or whatever.
7:41
So, yeah, that wound me up.
7:43
But I did have a very cool bike.
7:44
Excellent.
7:45
How did you convince your mum to let you go racing and where was that first race?
7:50
Yeah.
7:51
The first race was Kilcoyne Motorcycle Club, which is not far from where I live now, just in South East Queensland.
7:58
And it was a motocross and flat track event.
8:00
But how I convinced that my parents were good friends with some people called Daryl and Jenny Moller, who owned a Kawasaki dealership in our local town.
8:08
And my dad's probably bought 20 bikes off these guys over the years.
8:12
They don't own the dealership anymore.
8:13
They've since retired.
8:14
But yeah.
8:16
the Kawasaki shop and we used to go and see them and go to Christmas parties.
8:19
And it was a Christmas party of 92, I believe.
8:22
And I was sitting and there's a KX60 sitting on the showroom floor.
8:27
And, and dad tells me that I did not get off that bike for the whole event.
8:31
You know, I was just climbing over it, sitting on it.
8:34
I want one of these, I want one of these.
8:36
And so I had to sell my TY80 and try and, you know,
8:40
convinced mum and dad to come up with the extra $1,500 or whatever.
8:44
This bike was about $2,000 at the time, I think.
8:47
It was a proper racing bike and I just wanted it right or wrong and that was the time.
8:51
So mum, yeah, mum finally gave in.
8:55
Yeah, you can have one of these and we can ride around.
8:56
But yeah, we went out to Kilcoy Motocross Club in 93, I think it was, 92 or 93.
9:04
I would have been 11 years old, 10, 11 years old.
9:06
And yeah, turned up there to the first meeting.
9:08
I mean...
9:10
Um, and that's when we did motocross and flat track and straight away I had, I much more enjoyed the flat track, the speed, being able to slide the bike through the corners.
9:19
I wasn't much of a jumper.
9:20
I was pretty hopeless to be honest, going around the motocross tracks.
9:22
So, um, so my attention turned to, to wanting to do flat track racing pretty much straight away.
9:29
How, um, I mean, it becomes such a beneficial asset when I've spoken to Casey Stoner and others about this, it, it, it, um.
9:37
as a skill, it helps you with MotoGP and other racing further down the track.
9:42
Tell me about some of the people that you came up against in this period.
9:46
Well, that's it.
9:47
And I think we had a golden period in motorcycle racing for kids in Australia at that age.
9:53
I mean, Casey was a couple of years younger than me and I met him a few years later.
9:57
He would generally go up the age group.
9:59
He was very good from such a young kid.
10:02
Yeah.
10:03
So he would come up to our age group at times.
10:05
But guys that were the same age as me or within a year or two were Brock Parks, Anthony West, Damian Cudlin.
10:13
And then just a couple of years older were the Stouffer brothers, Dan and Jamie Stouffer.
10:19
So there was some very fast competition.
10:21
I mean, we'd go to a local race and a club meeting, and it would be the same guys that were battling for the Australian Championships.
10:27
So, you know, it was...
10:30
All of our levels lifted because all of us were pushing each other all the time, if you know what I mean.
10:36
And hence Casey coming to race us when he was two or three years younger.
10:41
And it was hard to beat the kid then, I tell you.
10:43
It was very hard to beat him at the end of my career too.
10:46
But yeah, no, it was a great era in flat track racing in Australia, I think for sure.
10:52
Most definitely.
10:54
I can recall subbing for Lee Diffie on occasions.
10:57
He was commentating back then and you guys would have a massive schedule.
11:01
I think I went to the Acuba Nationals once and some stuff at Ballina and places like that.
11:06
And it wasn't uncommon for you to have between all the different classes and age groups and so on, 80 to 100 races across a meeting, was it?
11:12
Well, that's it.
11:12
They're only like four lap races.
11:14
They're like two to three minutes long, I guess you're right, maybe four minutes long you're racing for.
11:19
But you're right, you'd have an 80cc bike, 100cc bike, and maybe a 125 if you're old enough to get on one.
11:26
It was all age grouped.
11:27
And you'd be out and you'd do a race and you'd get back in and you'd clean your goggles and wipe your number plate down, you're out on the next bike, you know, and it just kept going all day, like you said.
11:35
And
11:36
And were very cool days.
11:37
And I remember you commentating early days, like you say, Rusty, and Lee Diffie grew up in Brisbane or in Queensland, not far from us, and he used to commentate, you know, the local flat track races as well.
11:47
And, you know, seeing where you guys have gone as well, it was a very cool era for our whole sport, that's for sure.
11:53
Most definitely, mate.
11:54
Very, very memorable.
11:55
So was it just sort of you and your dad?
11:58
Did the racing and things like that come easily to you or were there lots of learnings along the way and were there others that helped with some of those learnings?
12:08
There was lots of learnings.
12:09
I don't think you ever stopped learning, of course.
12:11
But I think I just loved racing and bettering myself.
12:19
And most of all, I enjoyed riding my motorbike.
12:22
I just really loved being on it.
12:24
And I love the speed.
12:25
Like for me, flat tracking.
12:26
And when I got onto a 125 and these bikes that I thought that was so powerful and fast and we'd reach 130, 140 k's an hour and...
12:35
Mind you, we're 13 years old, you know, and we're sliding them sideways into corners.
12:39
And I just loved it.
12:40
I just lived for that.
12:42
And my parents used it against me, actually, in schooling.
12:45
You know, if I didn't do very good at school, the bikes were coming out, you know.
12:48
And same thing, I learned...
12:50
a mechanical understanding because I'd rebuild top ends like piston and ring changes in the bikes.
12:56
I'd change my own tires.
12:57
Don't get me wrong.
12:58
My old man was there to help me, but if I wasn't in the shed working on those bikes, we didn't go racing and I didn't care.
13:04
I wanted to do whatever I could to go out and ride those motorcycles.
13:07
But, um,
13:09
I loved it.
13:10
I just lived for it.
13:11
Never imagined at that time that I could make a career or a living out of it.
13:16
I mean, I was just coming into high school sort of age.
13:18
All I wanted to do was just go and ride motorbikes.
13:21
I didn't think about any other thing or making a career, you know.
13:25
I love that proper, pure passion, Chris, and you have that to this day.
13:30
That's something that's not changed.
13:32
When did it change, though, from an obsessed school kid to, righto, I really want to have a good crack at this?
13:42
Where did that sort of transpire?
13:44
I reckon after my first year, I said earlier, my birthday's in June.
13:52
So my first year and a half of road racing I did in Australia.
13:55
I did six months because you could only start when you were 16.
13:58
I did the second year or the first full season in 99, and that's when I got to know Barry Sheen.
14:04
And that's when I started to show some speed and I was beating factory superbike riders on a private bike as a young kid.
14:12
And that's when I met Barry and talking to him and he's saying, you know, you can actually do a lot from this and giving me ideas.
14:18
And maybe I'm going to go overseas next year and race these bikes, you know, and get paid money to race motorcycles.
14:25
That's when it was real.
14:27
gee, if I work really hard at this, it could be something that could become a future.
14:32
But it wasn't smooth sailing from then.
14:34
It wasn't like, oh, wow, I've got my first opportunity overseas.
14:37
I mean, a couple of years later, I had some terrible years and you think, oh, maybe this is all going to end now.
14:42
But it's...
14:45
It's a whole revolution, I guess.
14:46
It's a difficult thing to say.
14:48
I remember some other riders coming up.
14:51
They say, when did you know that you'd made it?
14:54
And I think even when you're at the top or as a world supersport champion or as a world super bike rider or a Grand Prix rider, it didn't think I'd made it because you're always, it's funny as a rider, you're nearly unemployed every year.
15:06
So you're focusing on just bettering yourself and how you can be a better motorcycle rider.
15:12
And like I said earlier, you never stop learning.
15:14
Baz was a great mentor for you and I'm glad that you brought him up.
15:17
So you touched on the late 90s in Australia there and I think you were on a Yamaha, mate, weren't you?
15:23
So you were 8th in the 99 Australian Superbike Championship.
15:27
You were top privateer.
15:28
You had a 4th place finish there.
15:30
Was that where Baz noticed you?
15:32
How did the connection with Barry Sheen come about?
15:34
It was pretty much.
15:36
We were very lucky.
15:36
That year we had what they called two plus four races.
15:39
So some of our rounds were televised with the V8 supercar.
15:42
So we'd be at the same track.
15:44
And that's the main reason I rode a superbike, because we'd get the television coverage and therefore we'd get some sponsors.
15:49
And I had some great backing from a milk company in Australia, Paul's Milk, which was eventually owned by Parmalad overseas.
15:56
Yeah.
15:57
help from tires and a few different things.
15:59
And, and obviously Barry Sheen was the commentator, you know, the great motorcyclist that was commentating in, in, in supercars as well.
16:08
Um, and, uh, yeah, he, he really got a, I guess took a shining to me, you know, I was a young kid doing quite well, pushing these guys.
16:16
I finished on the podium in a couple of races, a fourth overall at a round, like you said, a couple of rounds, um,
16:21
And I mean, Australian Superbike, the depth of the field was very, very strong then.
16:25
So we had Andrew Pitt, Steve Martin, Craig Connell, Sean Giles.
16:31
Jeez, I'm forgetting a lot of them.
16:32
But Mark Willis was there.
16:35
I mean, there were some fantastic riders.
16:37
And so for me to get on the podium was hard work, you know.
16:41
But yeah, Barry...
16:43
He definitely took me under his wing.
16:44
Once I met him the first time, I remember, I don't know what you remember of Baz Rusty, but getting his card and it was, you know, Barry Sheen MBE and then he's addressed the Manor House.
16:55
And you just think, well, this guy's just, it's just another world, isn't it?
16:59
You know, and I'm just this young kid and he goes, ego, Chris, give me a call sometime, you know?
17:03
So, yeah, and I remember he did a TV interview with me, sat me down, um...
17:10
about talking to the media, how to deal with that, how to get your point across.
17:14
If someone asks you a question, you know, that you don't really want to go down and just lots of things with that.
17:19
And I think my parents were very happy too, the first time we met him, because Barry was surprised that mum and dad, or we were paying for leathers and helmets and boots and all this stuff.
17:30
And he couldn't believe it.
17:32
You know, I'm racing at the top and beating these guys.
17:34
And
17:38
dials a number and starts talking in a foreign language.
17:42
It was Italian, I later realized.
17:44
And then he's on the phone for five minutes, then hangs up and he goes, there you go, I just got you three helmets, two sets of leathers, a couple of pairs of boots and some gloves from Dane Easy in AGV.
17:54
That was the boss of Dane Easy that he just called up and he said, you deserve it.
17:58
And my parents were blown away, as was I.
18:01
So that was just some of his small connections.
18:05
Yes.
18:06
That was Barry to a teammate.
18:07
And I love the fact that he took a shining to you.
18:10
And when he did that, when he opened up the phone book and he could call people like that and speak to them in many different languages.
18:18
And I love, I mean, you and I were both in the very early parts of our career and it was the latter part of his life and he was good to both of us for different reasons.
18:26
But I couldn't even recall him, in my case, doing life advice.
18:30
He'd say...
18:31
You know, for girlfriends, he'd say, yeah, yeah, thruster, start out as you mean to continue.
18:37
You know, don't go, don't go getting heaps of flowers and blah, blah, blah.
18:42
And that was the thing with you, mate.
18:45
In a business sense as well, he really helped you understand the importance of putting things in place off the bike too, didn't he?
18:53
Oh, very much so.
18:55
You know, just when I – and like you say, it was the early part of my career, so I wasn't earning lots of money.
19:02
And that's the other thing.
19:03
Barry organized a lot of my early contracts when I first went overseas, and he didn't want to send for it.
19:07
He just wanted me to promote his name.
19:10
Just say Barry Sheen helped me.
19:12
He knew how important that publicity was.
19:15
And when I first went to the UK, how big he was, I couldn't believe it.
19:18
You know, he was still –
19:20
He'd blow Valentino Rossi out of the water, you know, back in those days.
19:22
He was just this huge star and still is.
19:25
But, yeah, like you say, it was the whole life support and setting things up and being prepared for the future and, you know, investing into businesses and owning your home and all that sort of stuff.
19:37
You know, he was a great mentor.
19:40
And I was thinking about it earlier when you asked me about doing this call and I figured Barry would come up at some point.
19:46
Yeah.
19:46
It's such a shame, I feel, that he didn't get to see how I progressed and I didn't get to see him in later life because I think Barry helped so many guys, but he would still, if he was around today, he'd still be helping so many young riders, young athletes get the chance or opportunities to fulfil their careers for sure.
20:07
That is so, so true.
20:08
So that leads me to the fact that did he help you kind of,
20:12
map out a plan.
20:13
I know when Lee Diffie went to, when he left Supercars and he went to the UK for the first time, and he ultimately ended up working with Baz's great mate, Steve Parrish, and in the world, Superbike Paddock, which you would call home during that time.
20:25
You know, Baz quietly made calls in the background to help Lee get an introduction and to get things sort of started there.
20:32
So what's,
20:33
that the kind of conversation you had with Baz beforehand about, okay, what we're going to do here, right, is we're going to get you into, you know, British super sport or to super stock or something.
20:43
What were those combos like?
20:44
No, no, Barry, it was a little bit different with mine.
20:47
I can remember I came down in 99 to the Australian Grand Prix, okay, and I'd done a very fast lap time at the Phillip Island race earlier that year.
20:57
It was one of the last races I was progressing as a rider
21:00
And I set this very fast lap time.
21:02
I qualified on the front row of the grid, I think, down there as a privateer.
21:05
Anyway, so Baz says, I'll come down to Phillip Island.
21:08
I'll introduce you to some people.
21:09
And I remember he took me into the Yamaha garage and Carlos Checo was riding.
21:15
And it was, it might have been 2000, 99, 2000.
21:18
It was the early stages, the end of the 500s, start of the four-stroke era.
21:22
Anyway.
21:24
The lap time I'd done on my R1 was quicker than what Checker had done.
21:27
So Barry was pretty much into Yamaha saying, you need to get rid of this kid, Carlos Checker, and you need to put this young fella on.
21:35
He'll do a better job.
21:37
That was Barry straight up.
21:39
Also, you know, he knew the Suzuki family very well.
21:42
Gary Taylor ran the Suzuki team at that stage.
21:45
And Barry said the same thing to him.
21:47
And I didn't know that.
21:49
He was telling him to get rid of Sete Jimenao and put me on the bike next to Kenny Jr. And...
21:55
I didn't know at that stage, but years later, I end up riding for Suzuki and MotoGP.
21:59
Gary Taylor's not the team manager anymore, but still got a connection with Suzuki.
22:02
Comes to the track, he goes, I still remember your name.
22:05
Barry Sheen brought you in the garage in 99 or whatever, and he told me to put you on the bike.
22:11
You'd do better than these numpties.
22:12
And he goes, look, he was right, because you're on here now doing a fantastic job, you know?
22:15
And this is like seven, eight years later, you know?
22:18
So yeah, Baz was out there pushing my name around, that's for sure.
22:33
A mentor is defined as an experienced and trusted advisor.
22:37
My definition of a mentor is just two words.
22:41
Barry Sheen.
22:42
So UK was the first stop on the international adventure for you.
22:48
How certain were things when you left?
22:52
Did you say to yourself, right, I'm going to give this an honest kind of two years or just roll the dice?
22:57
What did you do?
22:59
Baz rang me up.
23:00
He rang home and someone else answered.
23:04
I got on the phone and he goes, right, Chris, I've got you a job for next year.
23:07
We're going, you're racing for Sanyo Honda in the British Supersport and Superstock Championship.
23:13
You're going to get £10,000 to sign on for the year.
23:17
You get to keep your bonus money.
23:19
You get to keep some leather money.
23:22
You have to fly to the UK in about 10 days' time for a test, blah, blah, blah.
23:28
Is that all good?
23:29
And I've gone, yeah, I think so, Barry.
23:31
Yeah, it sounds pretty good to me.
23:34
And I've got off the phone and...
23:38
put it down.
23:38
I said to mum, oh, I'm going to England in 10 days.
23:40
She's going, what?
23:41
You what?
23:41
You know, like blowing my parents out.
23:43
I'm a 17-year-old kid.
23:44
I said, oh, Barry said this and that.
23:46
And so my mum or dad called Barry back, you know, to check some details and whatever.
23:51
And yeah, pretty much he'd organized a ride over there.
23:53
But
23:54
It wasn't guaranteed.
23:56
The ride was with one of his old teammates, Mick Grant, was the team manager.
24:00
So he put in a good word for me.
24:01
But I had to go to Spain and test.
24:05
And actually, my teammate ended up being another Aussie, Glenn Richards, very, very fast Australian rider that never went to the World Championship but quick in British Championships.
24:13
And, yeah, we went down to this small track, Califat, in Spain, tested.
24:18
I ended up being quicker than Glenn at that test and it got me the ride.
24:23
So you've still got to do the work yourself.
24:24
You've still got to prove that you can do it.
24:27
But, yeah, Barry set up a whole range of things.
24:31
It was still funny.
24:32
I just remember getting off the phone thinking, oh, this is fantastic.
24:34
I'm going to get paid about $25,000 for the year.
24:39
I had no idea how much living costs were.
24:41
I still lived at home, you know, so I didn't realize all of that was going to go into rent and food and I'd have nothing left at the end.
24:47
But yeah, I managed to go to the UK, managed to make enough money to live for the year, buy my blue Ford Sierra and my little caravan that I traveled around the British Championships and lived in the middle of the country.
24:58
So it was easy to go everywhere and away I went and won a few races that year and it opened up a lot of doors for the future.
25:05
There is a bit of a celebrity backstory here too, which is so typical of Baz.
25:10
I mean, you talked about him.
25:12
I can remember not comprehending until you sort of got to a British Grand Prix or something along those lines.
25:19
I mean, he's a rock star over there, an absolute rock star.
25:22
But there was a connection in this early part of your career with someone that is very well known in music circles, but you actually didn't really know who they were.
25:30
No.
25:30
I was telling you this earlier.
25:33
My mum knew who it was, but yeah, a silent owner of the team, San Diego Honda at the time, was Mark Knopfler.
25:39
And anyway, when we went to Spain one of the first times, we were going in Mark Knopfler's private plane.
25:46
And I had no idea.
25:47
I said, who's Mark Knopfler?
25:49
You've got to remember, motorbikes are my world.
25:51
So I said, who does he ride for?
25:52
If he's got a plane...
25:54
He must be good, but I haven't heard of him before, you know, sort of thing.
25:58
Anyway, we go down there.
25:59
Really nice bloke.
26:00
Got to know him.
26:01
My mum couldn't believe it.
26:02
She's a massive Dire Straits fan, just, you know.
26:06
And, yeah, so met Mark quite a few times.
26:09
We ended up doing a lot of things together.
26:11
And early in that year, we went to some track days, and I remember it.
26:14
it actually being a pain in my backside because we'd get these days at the track to test.
26:19
So I'd want to be there, you know, working on the bike tires, you know, understanding the circuits, that sort of thing.
26:25
But Mark would rent the tracks so he could drive around with his mates in his fancy cars.
26:30
And I tell you, there's some very fancy old Le Mans style cars, some, you know, multi-million pound vehicles out there.
26:38
And sometimes we'd have to get in the car with him or, you know,
26:41
go around the lap or he'd ride a motorbike with us and we'd have to do a couple of slow laps.
26:46
And I thought it was the biggest pain in the backside.
26:48
But little did I know, this guy was a mega, mega rock star and he's renting the track so we can actually do some testing.
26:54
So yeah, I had no idea at the time, but...
26:57
Again, that was another Barry Sheen connection.
26:58
So it was Barry knowing Mark Knopfler and Mick Grant that put a lot of the connection together.
27:04
But as you say, a rock star.
27:06
I remember being at the British Grand Prix.
27:08
I think it was the year 2000 or 2001.
27:10
I remember.
27:13
I mean, Kenny Roberts Jr. was world champion and winning the world championship.
27:17
Valentino Rossi had just come in.
27:19
Max Biagi, Sete Gibinau, big-time riders at the time, autograph session.
27:23
I mean, Barry Sheen flies in in a helicopter, lands right next to the autograph session, goes over the queue, and the queue for his line was tenfold all the others added together, you know, and Barry would stay there and sign every autograph, kiss every lady on the cheek, shake every bloke's hand, um...
27:42
He was just an absolute legend.
27:43
And you could see he was a rock star in our world, that's for sure.
27:46
That's definitely.
27:47
Was that a bit of a learning for you too, mate, about...
27:50
the importance of being you, because you and I aren't Barry Sheen, clearly in personality terms, I mean, but he was just, I never saw him, if you were in a restaurant or if you were anything like that, he'd never turn anybody away or fail to stop and have a chat with them or an autograph and a laugh.
28:10
And it might only take a couple of minutes of his time, but he was always so giving in that regard, wasn't he?
28:15
And I think that did rub off on me.
28:17
I think you're right.
28:18
It's about being yourself.
28:19
And that was Barry.
28:21
That was Barry.
28:22
And I remember after I met him and you talk to people, they say, what's he actually like?
28:26
And you say, what you see on TV is what you get in – that is Barry Sheen, isn't it?
28:30
That's just him all the time.
28:32
And you're right.
28:33
He loved people that enjoyed the sports he was into.
28:38
And you give him a couple of minutes of your time because –
28:41
because they've seen you and they want to come and meet you or shake your hand or get an autograph or whatever.
28:45
Barry was more than happy to do that.
28:47
And I could see the pleasure that puts on people's faces.
28:49
And, yeah, I think it...
28:54
It definitely rubbed off.
28:54
You know, you can see how to handle yourself in pressure situations because I was a young kid doing quite well.
29:01
I was a very shy young kid too.
29:02
So I didn't, you know, it wasn't like me to come out and sort of meet people and how you're going.
29:07
And, you know, they wanted to talk about what I was doing.
29:09
I just wanted to sort of hide away and go and ride my motorbikes.
29:12
But I saw how important that was because of what Barry did for sure.
29:16
So the bikes back then, when you get to the UK for super sports, super stock, you're living in the caravan that you talked about and doing the hard yards around the place, how big was the step up in competition relative to Australia?
29:31
Look, I don't think the top level was any higher than it was in Australia.
29:35
It's just that we had like eight fast guys in Australia and you had about 28 fast guys in the UK in different classes.
29:42
You know, it was sometimes very hard to qualify for races, just the depth of the field.
29:47
And I mean, some of these guys...
29:50
When I went there and I was racing, there was Neil McKenzie was still racing.
29:54
Now, he's a guy that raced 500s against Barry Sheen.
29:56
So some of the experience, you know, Rob McElney was running a team.
30:01
James Whittam was racing.
30:03
Neil Hodge and Chris Walker.
30:05
I mean, the level of competition there and the experience these guys had had.
30:11
on the circuits, they'd been racing these circuits for years and years and years.
30:14
It was, it was pretty hard to, uh, to sort of push your nose in.
30:17
So, um, but what really opened the door for me, my first round was Brands Hatch.
30:22
They do two circuits at Brands.
30:23
They do the Indy circuit, which is the much shorter one.
30:26
Um, and I put the bike on the front row of the grid so that no one knew who I was.
30:29
I was this 17 year old Aussie sat on the front row of the grid and, and, you know, everyone's going, Oh, who's this kid?
30:35
What's he doing?
30:35
And that, that really opened a lot of doors, you know, instantly.
30:38
Well done.
30:39
So at what point then in the UK phase did the idea with Castrol Honda of going to World Supersport come about?
30:47
When did those conversations sort of begin?
30:49
How did that develop?
30:54
Well, I was racing Supersport and Superstock in the British Championship.
30:57
And there was this new class in World Championship called European Superstock, which is now 1,000 Superstock class.
31:03
And it had an age limit.
31:05
It had a maximum age limit, I think, of 24 years old.
31:10
And so I was quite successful in Superstock in the UK.
31:13
And the British round of World Superbikes came to Donington Park.
31:16
I was the only guy in the top 10 in the championship under 24.
31:20
So I went in as a wildcard.
31:22
And I was fastest in every session, pole position, won the race by about 10 seconds, fastest lap of the race.
31:31
And it opened a lot of eyes in World Superbike Paddock and World Supersport Paddock.
31:36
And mind you, at this stage, Barry Sheen was already talking to Neil Tuxworth for me.
31:40
Oh, there's this young Aussie kid.
31:42
He's riding a Honda.
31:43
You've got to get Chris Vermeulen.
31:44
You've got to get Chris Vermeulen on your bike.
31:46
You need to, you know...
31:48
I think they had, yeah, Aaron Slight had had injuries, you know, with his head injuries.
31:53
Yes.
31:54
The trauma he had there and they had Colin Edwards on, so they were getting fill-in riders on the seat.
31:58
You need to put this young Christopher Mullen on the bike, on Aaron's bike while he's not doing well, while he's not well, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
32:05
So Neil Tuxworth knew of me, obviously, from this race and Barry, you know, pushing my name all the time and a world super sport rider at the end of that year.
32:17
And I can't remember, it was a young Japanese rider.
32:19
He injured himself.
32:20
He was the second rider.
32:21
Pere Riba was one rider.
32:23
This Japanese rider was the other rider on the team.
32:25
And they needed a rider to fill in the last couple of races.
32:27
And that was Assen, Germany.
32:29
It was Ostersleben, I believe in Germany and Brands Hatch.
32:33
And this was the end of 2000.
32:34
And so they called me up to come and ride Assen.
32:38
That was another big step, you know.
32:41
This has all happened within 12 months.
32:42
I'm going over to Holland to race a world championship race.
32:46
I finished inside the top 10, I believe, 10th or 11th maybe.
32:51
I mean, there's some fast guys in there.
32:53
I was racing against Ruben Zaus and Pere Reber and yeah, some really, really fast guys in that era.
33:01
Then I came to, I went to Germany.
33:03
I qualified on the second row of the grid in eighth place.
33:06
I got taken out in turn one.
33:08
Ian McPherson, Scottish rider, made a mistake at the inside and a few of us went down.
33:12
And then went to Brands Hatch and got another 10th place.
33:15
I think Andrew Pitt actually won the World Championship that year.
33:18
There you go, at Brands Hatch.
33:19
He won.
33:20
It was very famous because he won the World Championship without winning a race.
33:22
He was just very consistent all year, always inside that top five.
33:27
Yeah, so it was...
33:29
Another big learning curve.
33:30
And that gave me the opportunity because I did well in those races.
33:33
I signed with Castrol Honda for 2001 in the World Supersport Championship.
33:38
So I was the only rider on the 600 for them.
33:41
And they had two riders in Superbike.
33:42
And that was Colin Edwards and Tatiuki Okada then.
33:45
So it sounded all great at the start of that year.
33:49
But it was probably the worst year of my career was 2001.
33:52
So everything had been on this massive track.
33:54
growth and gain and we're going forwards and we had a shocking year in 01 and it was it was basically down to I had no teammate I was very inexperienced I didn't know I think I knew two or three of the circuits that we went to for the whole year so I was learning tracks and we were one of the only teams on Mitchell and tires at the time and Dunlop and Pirelli definitely had an advantage over us so it was a shocking year and pretty much my career could have ended there you know I think I finished
34:20
I can't remember 15th in the world championship.
34:23
Um, no race better than fifth or sixth.
34:27
Um, a lot of races sort of 10th to 12th place.
34:30
It was just, we just weren't competitive, you know?
34:32
So I'd had this, this incredible rise in my career to get back to reality in 2001.
34:36
And it was, uh, it was definitely, uh, definitely, uh, feet back on the ground time for sure.
34:41
So how did you deal with that?
34:42
And, you know, um,
34:46
You're with a great team.
34:47
You're on the world stage.
34:48
You're learning lots of things.
34:49
Clearly, from the early part of this conversation that we've had, you are a competitive human being too.
34:53
So this is not easy to deal with, is it?
34:56
No, definitely not easy to deal with.
34:57
And I did have many opportunities.
35:00
You've got to remember being an Aussie or a Kiwi or an American, it's hard work when you're in Europe.
35:07
European teams would much prefer to take European riders.
35:11
First of all, they can stay home.
35:12
It's cheaper.
35:14
You know, for us, we put our whole life aside and move over there.
35:18
It's sort of sometimes it's harder work for them to make Aussies work, if that makes sense.
35:25
So, you know, I wasn't getting many opportunities coming my way, that's for sure.
35:30
And it's another guy that...
35:34
that I knew from the UK that Barry had introduced me to, a guy that Barry used to race against.
35:38
His name was Eddie Roberts.
35:40
And Eddie was the international racing manager for Pirelli.
35:44
And they were running, doing very well in world championship.
35:49
And Eddie sort of took me under his wing a little bit, being there and got me an opportunity with Tencada Honda.
35:57
And Tencada were going to run in a second team in the world championship under a Belgian team.
36:02
a rider, Werner Damon, it was called the Vanzon Honda Team.
36:05
And this is the bike I rode and ended up getting on in 2002.
36:08
So I had to take a massive pay cut.
36:10
I barely got paid enough in 2002, you know, to live basically over there.
36:16
Because, I mean, 2001, riding for Castrol Honda, you do earn pretty well.
36:20
Well, I thought I was...
36:21
I was 18 years old, I thought I was rich, you know.
36:24
I was getting all this money, you know.
36:27
But it was nothing like what the big riders were getting.
36:30
But yeah, I had to take this massive pay cut, barely get any money, able to keep my helmet money and a few other things and ride these Vans on Honda.
36:39
And so I spoke to Barry about it and he said, mate, if it gets you on the right bike, the right tires to show what you can do,
36:48
it's the right step without doubt.
36:49
And I remember my first race on this bike, I finished fourth.
36:52
I challenged, just missed out on the podium.
36:54
It was a little bit of inexperience.
36:57
I had three podiums that year, a couple of pole positions, challenged for race wins.
37:01
And that pretty much turned my whole career around, just getting on the right motorcycle.
37:05
I began this podcast by talking about your Dutch heritage too, mate.
37:10
And it sort of pops up along the way in your career.
37:14
I mean, the team has its Dutch roots.
37:18
You're having moments of Dutch tracks of, you know, like Assen where there's success there as well.
37:26
Yeah.
37:27
You've bounced from what was a difficult patch, but, you know, Tenkata, at what point did you think, you know, we could really challenge for the World Championship, which you would ultimately win in 03?
37:41
As soon as I got on the bike.
37:42
So I rode the bike.
37:44
I did a two-year deal with Tenkata to ride the Vans on bike for two years.
37:50
But after my first year and I had showed a bit of success and they had Fabian Ferre, world champion in Tenkata, and he left at the end of that year and went to Kawasaki for basically a big payday because –
38:02
The Tenkata guys are Dutch, as you say, and I've got a Dutch heritage, and they're tight.
38:05
They're tight as anything.
38:07
That's the Dutchie coming out.
38:09
So they'll run on a shoestring if they can, and they get results on a shoestring.
38:13
So, yeah, I had an opportunity to move into the main Tenkata team, and Carl Muggeridge was my teammate, so another Aussie.
38:20
This is 2003.
38:21
We got a brand-new CBR 600 that year.
38:25
The old one had been around for a long time, so there's this brand-new model, a lot of hype around it.
38:32
And I remember Honda started to put a lot more support into Tenkada and, yeah, riding for the Dutch team.
38:38
And, I mean, it definitely helped having that Dutch surname.
38:41
There was Jürgen van der Gorberg around, but there was really no other Dutch rider for quite a while.
38:46
So I did get a little bit of support that way, you know, having the Vermeulen surname and Dutch heritage.
38:52
Yeah.
38:53
Yeah, I went on to win that world championship and I won it quite convincingly.
38:57
I won four races, I think, that year.
39:01
I was barely off the podium.
39:03
I had one crash, I believe, and about won sixth or seventh place and nearly every other race was on the podium.
39:11
A couple of great things there too, Chris, statistically.
39:13
I mean, youngest ever winner, you were the lead rider for the team as well in many respects, weren't you?
39:18
So that growth curve had continued to be steep in many respects because a lot's expected of you.
39:25
It is a lot's expected of you.
39:27
Yeah.
39:28
But at that time, it's funny, when everything starts to go well, I'm still the same person.
39:33
You feel like you're invincible.
39:34
You know, I was still – I don't think I was riding a lot better than I was two years earlier when I struggled like hell on that Castrol Honda bike just because we didn't have the right team around us and the right, you know, parts on the bike, et cetera.
39:48
And you get on with a really good team and you get the right support.
39:52
And –
39:53
And they worked with me the right way.
39:55
It's amazing.
39:56
It's like we go to a race and we finish third and it was a shocking weekend.
39:59
You know, it was like, that was pretty bad.
40:01
You know, it was just everything seemed to happen very easy.
40:05
Don't get me wrong.
40:06
I worked hard and I worked as hard that year as I did on everything else, on my fitness and my diet, on track lines, on fitness,
40:15
feedback to the mechanics, to the engineers, but everything just seemed to come quite easy.
40:20
But getting on a super bike the next year was definitely another step.
40:24
It's funny.
40:25
I remember being World Supersport champion a couple of races before the end of the season, and I wanted to move to World Superbike.
40:32
I thought I've proved myself here.
40:34
I had five offers from different teams come in for World Supersport, nothing for Superbike.
40:39
They said, no, no, no, you're a really good Supersport rider, but you're not a Superbike rider.
40:44
And it was just this mentality that was going around.
40:46
I remember talking to Davide Tardotzi about it.
40:47
He wanted me on the Ducati.
40:48
They were going to pay me lots of money.
40:51
I said, but I prefer to ride your Ducati Superbike for nothing.
40:54
You know, no, no, you're a really good Supersport rider.
40:58
I mean, I only took a couple of races on the superbike and I was on the podium at Phillip Island, you know, my second round.
41:03
And people start to go, yeah, this guy can ride a superbike.
41:06
But it was funny.
41:07
And then that happened later in my career.
41:09
Again, when you go to GPs, Grand Prix teams, when I look at you, oh, you're a superbike rider.
41:13
You're a really good superbike rider, but I don't know if you're a Grand Prix rider.
41:15
And he takes a couple of races, they go, oh, now you're a really good Grand Prix rider.
41:18
You know, it's just funny sort of mentality that team managers don't want to take too much risk in case it goes wrong.
41:26
I want to, before we launch into those chapters, both Superbike and MotoGP, just to stop for a moment, mate, and have a little bit of a recollection of that 2003 bike.
41:36
Because in the podcast, we like to focus on a couple of vehicles that are prominent in people's lives as well.
41:41
So that's a special machine for you.
41:43
What was it like to ride?
41:45
Were there any sort of unique traits with it?
41:47
And how did it develop as the year went on?
41:50
Yeah, well, like I said earlier, it was a brand new bike.
41:52
The 2003 CBR600 was a whole new design.
41:55
The old bike was much bigger, heavier, clumpier.
41:59
The exhaust came out the side.
42:00
This bike had a single exhaust at the back up under the seat.
42:04
It was much more aerodynamic.
42:06
And like I said, Honda put a lot of effort into this bike.
42:08
I remember they came out with stuff like they had this special slippery tape, they called it.
42:12
It was this jagged edge tape that they put down the side of the fairing to make it all more aerodynamic.
42:18
Tenkata were very good at understanding the rules in world supersport.
42:22
We weren't allowed to have a quick shifter, so an electronic...
42:29
thing on the gear lever basically that you can hold the engine flat and go through the gears without shifting.
42:34
That's illegal in world super sport.
42:36
But what you're allowed to do is we use the high beam flash button on the switch block.
42:44
So we could hold it flat.
42:45
You'd put your foot against the gear lever and hit this button.
42:47
It worked as a kill switch.
42:48
Amazing.
42:49
So we'd cut the ignition.
42:51
It was little things like that that gave us, I mean, you're talking about a 30 odd, 600 bikes that are very, very even in the class.
42:58
If you can gain half a 10th of a second by gear shifts over a lap that way, there's little things.
43:04
Now we weren't the only team using it, but it was the first time that I'd had that technology.
43:09
And yeah, it was a very cool bike.
43:12
I remember doing lots of early stuff because it was the first one of these bikes.
43:18
well, we were the first team, sort of factory team to have them.
43:20
So we did a lot of the early releases of it and Honda worked a lot on our feedback.
43:25
So I guess it was the first time in my career I was sort of a factory rider where information would go back to the factory and they would turn that into stuff that would work better for me on the track.
43:36
So you're having input.
43:37
Yeah.
43:38
Yeah, exactly.
43:39
Exactly.
43:40
And at the end of that year...
43:41
I went to Superbike in 04.
43:43
And again, that was a brand new bike in 2004.
43:47
And this was a CBR 1000.
43:48
So it's their flagship bike.
43:50
And I was Honda's only world champion at it.
43:52
Sorry, there were two Honda world champions in road racing out of 03.
43:55
And that was Valentino Rossi and myself.
43:57
But Valentino had left Honda to go to Yamaha at the start of 2004.
44:01
So I was Honda's main guy worldwide.
44:04
They were using for advertising and marketing on this new CBR 1000 as well.
44:08
So I remember...
44:09
having to go to South Africa for a lease, go to Phoenix in America for a release, go to Phillip Island for a ride of this bike.
44:17
So it's amazing how quickly you start to become, you know, somebody important in a big corporation.
44:23
Before we move into World Superbike, this success in 2003 for you all happens, very sadly, at the time that we lose Barry Sheen.
44:34
It happened very early in the season.
44:35
He left us in
44:36
in March that year.
44:37
Where were you when you heard the news?
44:40
How did it affect you?
44:41
What, what impact did that have on you?
44:43
Um, look, I spoke to Barry a few months, maybe three months before he passed away.
44:50
And I remember, I remember calling home his house and, uh, and I thought it was his dad, Frank, that answered the phone because Barry, you know, he'd aged so much.
45:00
You could tell the cancer had really, really sort of taken hold of him.
45:03
And, uh,
45:04
I spoke to him by a few emails.
45:06
He loved a fax.
45:07
He loved a fax back in those days as well.
45:09
Oh, Barry loved sending through faxes.
45:11
I think he built his Australian house using one from England.
45:13
He faxed, what we need is we need this thing here, cut this here, move that there, blah, blah.
45:18
Yeah, that's it.
45:20
So, but yeah, you're exactly right.
45:23
So I was over in Europe when we heard he passed away.
45:25
I was actually in the UK, I believe at the time, and it was big news there, the front page of Motorcycle News, the front page of all the big newspapers over there.
45:33
So...
45:34
Yeah, even though it was happening, it was still a real shock, if you know what I mean.
45:41
And I won in 2003.
45:44
I used the number seven, so there was no one else using the number seven in the world championship in super sport.
45:48
So I grabbed it, jumped on it if I could, and ran the number seven, and I won my first world championship race at Phillip Island in,
45:57
only a number of weeks after Barry had passed away.
46:00
So he never, he never saw me win my first world championship race, you know, and, and I was very proud because I won it, you know, using the famous number seven.
46:09
So, um, but yeah, it was, it was pretty hard to take at the time.
46:13
Definitely.
46:14
You know, that he just wasn't there.
46:16
He made that number.
46:17
That was an iconic number, mate, with his success in 500 CC in the,
46:20
in the seventies and I'm glad that you embraced it.
46:24
What did it mean to win at the Island like that?
46:27
Oh, I tell you, and like I said, it was my first world championship win.
46:31
So I was quickest all weekend, every session I topped.
46:35
I was pole position.
46:37
I led the, I think I ended up winning by 10 or 11 seconds or maybe even more.
46:41
It was quite a, quite a large gap.
46:42
So I had a gap pretty early on by about lap four or five.
46:46
I started to gap the field a little bit and,
46:49
I tell you, the hardest thing I've ever done is wrap up your first ever world championship win.
46:54
And by so far, you know, don't make a mistake.
46:57
If you make a mistake, now you're going to be a complete idiot, you know, like, oh, God.
47:00
And then is the engine making noise?
47:02
Is the tire all right?
47:03
Because Phillip Island's hard on top.
47:05
Have I used it too hard?
47:06
Are the other guys going to catch me back?
47:07
You know, so much going through your mind because I had all this time to play with.
47:11
I think it would have been...
47:12
a lot easier if Muggers was on the pace that weekend and we would have had to race, you know, because I think that I would have something to focus on instead of thinking about all this other stuff.
47:22
But, yeah, it was the second round of our championship we'd done.
47:26
I finished, I think, second at the first round, and then I came to Phillip Island and won.
47:30
So I was leading the world championship after that race as well.
47:33
So it was a very special moment.
47:41
That's the end of part one of my podcast with former MotoGP racer turned commentator Chris Vermeulen.
47:46
If you head back to the Rusty's Garage Library, part two is already there and set to be kick-started right now.
47:53
Over to you.
47:54
We talk about some very memorable races of his, other opportunities in the Premier Class, the cool cars in his collection and the painful decision to stop racing.
48:10
listener.