Latest / Rusty's Garage / Graeme Crosby (Part 2)

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Graeme Crosby (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  Hi, it's Rusty here.
• 0:21
  This is part two of my Convo with Graeme Crosby, a very handy bike racer in the 70s and 80s who was successful in almost every form of road or circuit racing.
• 0:32
  On the way to a brilliant career abroad, he conquered Bathurst.
• 0:36
  Yep, on a motorbike.
• 0:41
  Sadly, they don't have a massive bike meet at the mountain anymore like they used to.
• 0:46
  But you race there.
• 0:47
  You won on production bikes, on superbikes.
• 0:50
  That's before the chase when Conrod was one big, long straight with massive almost yumps in it.
• 0:58
  What was that joint like to ride a race bike around when the Easter races were happening?
• 1:04
  Well, first of all, they didn't have much of the protection that they have now.
• 1:09
  You know, the Armco barriers were somewhere there, but not much.
• 1:13
  There was a couple of concrete walls, but it was extremely dangerous when I look back.
• 1:18
  But at the time, Bathurst is Bathurst.
• 1:20
  Everybody in Australia with the motorbikes, they all live for Bathurst.
• 1:24
  And my first impression when I got there and I looked at the hill was,
• 1:28
  I didn't believe it was so steep.
• 1:31
  And, you know, we did really well there, but it was kind of suited my riding style because I'd been brought up on the roads in New Zealand.
• 1:40
  So it wasn't a surprise, but it was certainly an eye-opener as far as the, A, the speeds and the differential in corner speeds.
• 1:50
  You know, you've got through the cutting and those sort of things were quite tight for a motorbike.
• 1:56
  But the speed down the straight when you come out of that last corner.
• 2:00
  Like what?
• 2:00
  I think one of them was like 144 mile an hour or something, wasn't it?
• 2:04
  No, we were quicker than that.
• 2:05
  Were you?
• 2:05
  Yeah, we were quicker than that because there was no Caltex chase and the bikes themselves had – there was no lifting devices or anything like that.
• 2:15
  So you ended up basically going over the first hump,
• 2:19
  because there were two in those days.
• 2:20
  The first hump with the front wheel just kind of just about maybe two or three inches above the ground.
• 2:28
  But the second one, you actually virtually had to climb inside the screen to keep the weight as far forward to stop it from going over backwards.
• 2:36
  And they were 170-odd mile an hour stuff, you know, so it was pretty bloody quick.
• 2:41
  Yeah.
• 2:42
  And as a consequence of that, you know, and these stories are there where, you know, somebody's decided to drill the brakes on their RG500 and they got it wrong and, of course, they have exploded under extreme pressure and...
• 2:55
  somebody's got killed at the end there, because that's quite a tight left-hander trying to stop from that speed.
• 3:01
  So that was always a good one.
• 3:03
  But the best race we've ever had over there was in 79 with Ronnie Bolden, myself, and John Woodley.
• 3:09
  Three different bikes, three different riders, and every lap, three different kind of leaders.
• 3:14
  It was just stunningly good.
• 3:16
  25 laps, I think it was.
• 3:18
  And I almost won it.
• 3:20
  I won the race the day before, but it was a wrong race, you know.
• 3:23
  But, oh, man, it was so close.
• 3:25
  Daunting, exhilarating.
• 3:26
  What did it – I mean, you would go and race touring cars there years later, but what was it like to race a bike there?
• 3:35
  It had become a party theme, you know, and that was the thing I liked about Bathurst.
• 3:40
  You know, you'd go and you'd stay in a pit area and you'd light a fire and they can't do it nowadays, of course.
• 3:44
  A great big bonfire and there'd be petrol and big tyres on there.
• 3:48
  There'd be beer flowing left, right and centre.
• 3:51
  And just the way the Aussies, the crowd got in behind it, just made it such a festival event or festive event.
• 4:00
  And that's what I liked about racing was that camaraderie that you could have, not necessarily on the track, but in and around it.
• 4:09
  Australia was a great step for you, but clearly there were no barriers.
• 4:14
  You obviously thought you could do things beyond the Tasman region, shall we say.
• 4:19
  There's a great trip story to Le Mans for a 24-hour bike race, which is covered in your book, by the way.
• 4:25
  People should go and read it because we won't cover all the stories here in this discussion, but Larrikin Biker is very funny.
• 4:33
  You guys, I think, got sozzled while waiting for a delayed flight from Australia.
• 4:37
  The bike ended up getting offloaded in maybe New Caledonia or somewhere like that.
• 4:42
  And by the time you got to France, you'd missed the first practice.
• 4:44
  And you actually rode the bike, the bike, through the rain, through Paris, and then southwest to Le Mans.
• 4:51
  Is this true?
• 4:52
  Absolutely true, absolutely true.
• 4:54
  And I can tell it now because Qantas didn't sponsor people in motorsport in those days, but Ross managed to get a couple of grand off them.
• 5:03
  And they said, well, look, we'll pay you this.
• 5:05
  We can't give you airfares, but if you take that to a travel agent and buy the tickets, that's fine.
• 5:12
  So they gave us the money, which we then promptly gave to Air Caledonia because Air Caledonia gave us a couple of free tickets.
• 5:20
  So that was kind of, you know, it was a bit of a...
• 5:22
  I love this.
• 5:23
  You gave it to a completely different airline.
• 5:25
  Don't tell them, don't tell them.
• 5:27
  So when we arrived in Paris – or actually arrived at Sydney Airport at Mascot, you know, we were due to fly at about nine in the morning or the flight didn't get away until four in the afternoon.
• 5:38
  And we're all excited about our first big trip away.
• 5:40
  And, of course, you have a beer or two or three or five or ten.
• 5:43
  And we sort of piled onto the aircraft.
• 5:46
  And honestly, the –
• 5:48
  Those days were incredibly dangerous by today's standards.
• 5:53
  Standards, yeah.
• 5:53
  You know, you'd walk on there, you'd be totally drunk, which I shouldn't really say, but anyway, I was.
• 5:59
  They wouldn't have let me on nowadays.
• 6:00
  Yeah.
• 6:01
  And straight down the back, light up a cigarette.
• 6:03
  You know, that's what you did.
• 6:04
  So we spent most of the time hovering around the back of the airplane drinking beer and smoking cigarettes the whole way, right the way through to Charles de Gaulle Airport, only to find out that the bike that was coming by Caledonia got offloaded due weight in New Caledonia.
• 6:20
  So it arrived a couple of days late.
• 6:23
  Tell me then about the catch-up process in all of that because you mispractice.
• 6:29
  As I said before, you had to ride through.
• 6:31
  You rode the bike, I think, on slick tyres, didn't you, in damp conditions, on cobblestones and all sorts of things, didn't you?
• 6:36
  It was wet, it was cold, and I drew the short straw.
• 6:40
  Everybody was in a Renault van, so they were all happy.
• 6:42
  They could sit there and do whatever they want on their way all the way down to Le Mans.
• 6:48
  I had to pick the bike up, and I drove through Paris.
• 6:51
  We didn't go the ring roads or anything like that, just straight through, and it's all cobblestones.
• 6:54
  So I'm on this 120 horsepower thing and all it wanted to do was light the wheels up, you know, slick tyres, and we rode it all the way down.
• 7:01
  But it seized on the way down, which was a bit of a shame.
• 7:04
  It was a brand new engine.
• 7:06
  And to cut a long story short, we got caught with poor fuel.
• 7:10
  because the fuel that we'd use in Australia is of a higher quality than what – Oh, okay.
• 7:15
  And the decision to make as far as fuel was made because as we come out of Charles de Gaulle Airport, we had to put fuel on the bike, and we saw this big sign depicting Phil Reid on his MV with Elf.
• 7:29
  So that's it.
• 7:30
  We'll put some Elf fuel in.
• 7:31
  It'll be good.
• 7:31
  Well, it wasn't.
• 7:33
  So we continuously seized this bike over probably a two-day period in between trying to actually qualify.
• 7:40
  And eventually we were on the last set of pistons and we were sort of just hopeful of trying to keep it together.
• 7:47
  And somebody suggested we use some fuel out of a Ferrari that was local there.
• 7:52
  So we put the Ferrari fuel in.
• 7:54
  And hey, presto, it was a completely different motorbike.
• 7:56
  We went out there, I think we qualified fifth or seventh or something like that.
• 7:59
  This is in the 24-hour race.
• 8:01
  And I'm on a street bike with a couple of CB Geige headlights hanging off the handlebars.
• 8:07
  And we were going to do 24 hours, but just the two of us, Tony Hattner myself.
• 8:11
  Crazy.
• 8:12
  And the people, I think, saw the Ferrari with the fuel being siphoned out of it into the bike going, what the heck is going on there?
• 8:20
  And in the midst of all this trying to cobble it together, there was a bit of time for shenanigans
• 8:26
  Someone sent a floating ball of flaming toilet paper through the Dunney system, didn't they?
• 8:34
  And back then, the toilets were all kind of connected.
• 8:38
  It was not me.
• 8:41
  It was not me.
• 8:41
  Categorically not me.
• 8:42
  But in those days, the latrines, as they say, were on a slight angle, and every probably 10 minutes or so, they would just release a flush and it would just...
• 8:52
  washed out but if you've got a flaming newspaper there it kind of runs along the seats underneath so there was a bit of a bit of a problem with that one i love it i love it
• 9:04
  You would ultimately, I mean, that's just one example of the international expansion, shall we call it.
• 9:12
  Let's get to one of the key points here in your career now.
• 9:15
  You arrived in the UK effectively in 1979, most of your possessions effectively in a carry bag, a scratched helmet, about 150 quid in your back pocket, and you're ready to take on the world.
• 9:28
  Did people tell you you were mad?
• 9:31
  Did you listen to them?
• 9:33
  What was everyone saying?
• 9:34
  I think you can sum that up.
• 9:35
  The first time I turned up at Brands Hatch, and this is an old story, but I'd never been to Brands before, so I didn't even know which way the track went or which way what the lap record was.
• 9:49
  In the first open practice, they allowed us to go up to the gate, and I said to the guy sort of jokingly, I said, which way's the track going?
• 9:56
  What's the lap record?
• 9:57
  And this guy, he curled his top lip up, and he said, who the hell do you think you are?
• 10:02
  Mike Harwood.
• 10:03
  So that was kind of a theme that carried through because I did go out there and I did get the lap record and I introduced super bikes, Aussie style or Kiwi style, to the Poms.
• 10:15
  And it was delivered in a fairly impactful way because everybody else was on their so-called pucker race machines and all the clip-ons and the cowlings and all that, and I turned it up on what appeared to be just a road bike, although it was in sheep's clothing, if you know what I mean.
• 10:31
  So it was kind of a...
• 10:32
  It was pretty damn good.
• 10:34
  So that whole thing started, but it was just a race as a preliminary race, race two before I got to the TT.
• 10:45
  Because the whole effort of going to Europe at that stage was I needed to ride at the TT and I got 600-pound start money, which was a lot.
• 10:56
  You needed to because you wanted to or because it was a part of the game then?
• 11:00
  Just explain that.
• 11:02
  Well, Ross Hannon introduced me.
• 11:04
  Well, I'd already said I wanted to go to the TT.
• 11:06
  He was a bit reluctant because he still wears the scars from a crash in 72, I think it was, when they had a mass start.
• 11:14
  Can you imagine a mass start at the TT?
• 11:16
  Well, he only got about three miles and had a big pile up and ended up in hospital there for almost a year.
• 11:21
  So you can imagine from his point of view that he did...
• 11:24
  The reluctance of letting somebody that doesn't have any experience go there.
• 11:27
  But I was pushed...
• 11:29
  I pushed myself to go there and I got Mike Halewood to give us a letter of recommendation that allowed me to actually start at the TT without having to do the Manx Grand Prix as kind of a practice.
• 11:39
  That's fantastic.
• 11:40
  What a glowing endorsement.
• 11:41
  What did he say?
• 11:43
  Well, I just asked him if he could provide a reference.
• 11:48
  But it was on the back more so than him saying, I'll help you.
• 11:52
  Because obviously I knew him in New Zealand.
• 11:56
  And he wrote this glowing report, which I looked at and went, whew.
• 12:00
  Ooh, I hope this works.
• 12:03
  But the Stanley Michael Bailey at the, Halwood at the bottom there, that was it.
• 12:09
  It gave us the start.
• 12:11
  So I got the 600 pound start money and I arrived about two weeks before and we decided to do the pre-TT race at Brands and that's when I turned up there.
• 12:25
  And again, they gave me 600 pound start money.
• 12:29
  This is a reoccurring theme, by the way.
• 12:31
  And nowadays, I would say that it's a group of people that have set prices, you know, because it doesn't matter where I went in England, it was always 600 pounds.
• 12:41
  Yeah.
• 12:42
  Yeah.
• 12:42
  So all these guys all got together.
• 12:44
  So I got my 600 pound there and then I got to the TT, got 600 pound there, and I finished fourth, which was from a newcomer to run fourth in the TT Formula One races was pretty good.
• 12:56
  Amazing.
• 12:58
  Then I went to the post-TT race, another 600 pound.
• 13:02
  We had trouble with the transmission at that stage.
• 13:04
  But by that stage, the word was out that they didn't know who this guy was because I'd just turned up unannounced.
• 13:13
  which is always a good way, come in the back door.
• 13:16
  And throughout the whole of 1979, I was caught between...
• 13:24
  Originally just only doing the TT and then going back to Australia to do the commitments with Kawasaki Australia, but then I ended up doing this, oh, hell, they've given me another 600 pounds, another 600 pounds.
• 13:33
  So I was backwards and forwards between Australia and England doing all these races.
• 13:40
  So it was really, really, really cool.
• 13:42
  Yeah, yeah.
• 13:43
  And also because I was racing with Morawaki,
• 13:47
  I had to do the eight hour in Japan as well.
• 13:51
  So there was kind of a lot of movement, you know, transport-wise going all around the world.
• 13:55
  And I was just counting the 600 pounds, 600 pounds, 600 pounds.
• 14:00
  Which was decent back then, wasn't it?
• 14:02
  It was enough to buy a shout or something.
• 14:04
  Yeah, it was good.
• 14:05
  You mentioned Japan there.
• 14:06
  We'll come back to the whole European and American, for that matter, side of things in a second.
• 14:11
  But between Morawaki with Kawasaki, Yoshimura as well, I mean, you had a wonderful affinity with Japan, mate, didn't you?
• 14:21
  The eight hour is something that among the great results you've achieved is something I know you cherish, isn't it?
• 14:28
  Yeah, now the reason for that really is it's kind of a back story, I guess, in that Yoshimura used to be kind of in Honda's pockets, I suppose, as far as producing hot rod bits for CB750s and things.
• 14:44
  He then went to America in the late 70s and got hooked up with a couple of other people.
• 14:49
  It kind of turned sour.
• 14:51
  But when Honda withdrew their support for him,
• 14:55
  because he was effectively beating them at their own game.
• 14:58
  He then got this sort of bee in his bonnet.
• 14:59
  He said, well, you know, I'm going to beat Honda at all costs.
• 15:02
  So he teamed up then with Suzuki.
• 15:05
  And, man, there's some rivalry there between Pops and Honda.
• 15:10
  And I was lucky enough to be part of the Suzuki, you know, team.
• 15:17
  At any stage, any advantage you could have over Honda was just a win.
• 15:21
  So the eight hour comes around.
• 15:23
  I think it was 78 that was the first one.
• 15:27
  Honda came up with their four or five RCB Hondas and their teams from Europe and Japan and all over the place, and they were expected to win hands down.
• 15:36
  Well, they got their asses kicked really badly, and it was a big event.
• 15:41
  There was probably 120,000, 130,000 people there, and –
• 15:46
  It was won by Wes Cooley and Mike Baldwin on a Suzuki.
• 15:53
  Second was Sugimoto on a Yamaha TZ750, and then I was run third.
• 16:02
  We ran out of petrol, believe it or not, at Spoon Corner, which is quite a way away, and Tony Hatton pushed the bike all the way back from Spoon Corner, and we still finished third.
• 16:12
  Amazing.
• 16:13
  And then afterwards we were talking about some various things, and Tony said to Morawake, he said, why didn't you have a reserve?
• 16:24
  He said, oh, yes, well, we did.
• 16:26
  We had a reserve.
• 16:28
  Why didn't you tell me?
• 16:28
  I forgot.
• 16:31
  So Tony ran out of fuel on the main tank and had a reserve but didn't know about it.
• 16:37
  And that was the end of it.
• 16:39
  And I remember finishing with, I think, three exhaust pipes and they were all glowing.
• 16:43
  The discs were glowing red hot, you know.
• 16:46
  It was just a fantastic, fantastic event.
• 16:50
  But in the middle of the night, or say 7 o'clock when it gets cold over there, the engines just come to life again because you've been in 37, 40 degrees of heat and then you've gone back down to sort of 25 again.
• 17:03
  And it's just – it was the first time that I realised that temperature plays so much as far as performance goes in engines.
• 17:11
  It's become a race of legend now, and you were there for the very first one.
• 17:15
  Obviously, you would go on to win it.
• 17:18
  You –
• 17:19
  continued the fun element in and around it.
• 17:22
  Did you send Harasan to pick up Tony Hatton and you told him what his name?
• 17:28
  What name did you tell him?
• 17:29
  Well, my co-writer, Tony Hatton, was due to arrive in Japan and –
• 17:37
  We'd been testing, and Honda's test track, or the Suzuka test track, their HRC and their racing teams were all there, and they'd been checking the times, and they were asking about this guy, Crosby, how, you know, he's quick.
• 17:55
  He's far too fast.
• 17:57
  And we kind of jokingly sort of said, ah, he's okay, but the real fast one, Tony Hatton, is arriving.
• 18:06
  And it scared the hell out of Honda, apparently.
• 18:08
  But anyway, Tony had never been to Japan, of course, so I organised one of Morawaki's staff members, Hara, to go and pick up Tony.
• 18:18
  Now, Hara speaks absolutely no English at all.
• 18:21
  And right to this day, he still doesn't.
• 18:24
  So I taught him how to say, you know, when you recognise Tony, to say, you know, ask him if he's Tony Hatton.
• 18:32
  And his instructions were to go up to him and hold out his hand and say, are you fuckface Hatton?
• 18:39
  And I know it sounds bad, and he did.
• 18:43
  He did exactly that.
• 18:45
  Tony was taken back a bit, as you can expect.
• 19:01
  In 2014, Team Mushashi completed the Suzaka Japan 8-hour endurance motorcycle race in 6 hours and 56 minutes.
• 19:11
  Think it might be time to change the name of the race?
• 19:15
  I'm intrigued about how the opportunity to get involved with Suzuki came about because in the moving of some of the chess pieces, did it open up a little bit surprisingly for you?
• 19:28
  How did that happen?
• 19:30
  Well, it was a big surprise because 79, my major racing was conducted in Australia and
• 19:37
  and also doing the TT Formula One Championship in England by itself.
• 19:42
  There were some other races that I did around the world, but what transpired, and I can always remember this, I was at, oh, where was it now?
• 19:52
  I can remember it.
• 19:52
  Scarborough.
• 19:53
  Scarborough.
• 19:54
  Terrible bloody place.
• 19:55
  Terrible.
• 19:56
  It's like a goat track, but everybody loved it because it was kind of, you know, the crowd could get really close to you and it was tight racing.
• 20:05
  Anyway, so I'm there on my Morawake bike and there's a problem with the brake.
• 20:10
  And, you know, the first race, it was, you know, I couldn't deal with it.
• 20:14
  So I ended up talking to Radar and Mick Smith, who were working at that stage with the Suzuki team.
• 20:25
  You probably need to sell them a little bit in the sense that,
• 20:30
  They're from our part of the world relative to England, and they were enormously talented guys in an engineering or team sense, weren't they?
• 20:38
  Yeah, they were.
• 20:38
  I mean, both of them have great stories to tell.
• 20:40
  I mean, Radar came from a motocross background and turned up in the UK in 78 or 79, ended up working with, funnily enough, the guy I originally talked about the first motorbike I rode, Ivan Miller.
• 20:56
  So he became like a mechanic for him doing Grand Prix at Comberford's.
• 21:01
  which was just down the road from where we were living in Surbiton.
• 21:05
  Again, Mick had spent a whole year with the Australians, you know, Jeff Sale, Murray Sale, all those guys doing the Formula 750 racing in 78.
• 21:17
  So they were all over there at the time, and they ended up working with Suzuki.
• 21:22
  So when I come along, you know, these are contacts that I already knew, and it was kind of like a backdoor entry in some respects, but...
• 21:28
  One of the things I've got to kind of explain is that that period between, say, 76 and 79 was horrendous as far as losing lives on the racetrack goes.
• 21:43
  When Suzuki at the end of, well, they were halfway through 79 negotiating to continue with Barry.
• 21:52
  Barry Sheen.
• 21:53
  Barry Sheen, yeah.
• 21:53
  There was a bit of a standoff there.
• 21:55
  And the standoff really was the fact that
• 21:58
  the Suzuki race team was being run by Barry out of Barry's house in Charleswood.
• 22:05
  And Suzuki felt that they were kind of losing a little bit of contact.
• 22:09
  I think in the book you talk about it, I love Baz and I worked with him for many years, but I think you talk about it being a bit...
• 22:16
  tail wagging the dog and they wanted to change that.
• 22:19
  Is that right?
• 22:19
  Yeah, well, you paraphrased it perfectly, so I can now move on.
• 22:24
  Well done.
• 22:26
  That was really the crux of it.
• 22:27
  So they had to bring control back into Suzuki Great Britain.
• 22:30
  Barry pushed back against that.
• 22:32
  And as a consequence, there was a change of command, I suppose.
• 22:37
  And the Suzuki race team was reintroduced back to Beddington Lane and Croydon, of which there was Radar and
• 22:47
  So the talent spotters kind of went out and said, okay, well, who are we going to replace Bowery with?
• 22:53
  And it wasn't hard because you had Tom Heron, you had John Williams, they had all these other guys that were English.
• 23:02
  But they tended, in a short period of probably only three or four months, they got killed.
• 23:08
  Cool.
• 23:09
  So it was horrendous.
• 23:12
  So what, of course, happened then is that they decided they had to look elsewhere, and they elected to talk with Randy Mamala to come on board for the Grand Prix.
• 23:24
  And they also wanted to push on the Formula One championship with Yoshima, of course, because they had a good tie-up.
• 23:30
  So I was the target.
• 23:32
  I didn't know it at the time.
• 23:34
  So there I am at Scarborough and talking with Radar about, oh, we can't get this bloody thing to work.
• 23:39
  So, okay, if I can't get two discs to work, I'm sure as hell I should be able to get one disc.
• 23:44
  So I took one disc off completely and just ran the race with one disc that I knew was working.
• 23:51
  And, oh, that's what you did in those days, you know.
• 23:54
  But anyway, as part of that conversation,
• 23:57
  connection in the afternoon at Scarborough, they let it slip that my name had been put up as a potential rider for Suzuki Great Britain in 1980.
• 24:09
  And I thought, whoa, that's a big step.
• 24:11
  You know, you've got to remember that, you know, I'd turned up to do the pre-TT, then we did the TT, the post-TT, done a whole bunch of these other things.
• 24:17
  No way in the world would I have ever dreamed that somebody would come along and say, here's a factory ride.
• 24:25
  Just to clarify here, you are one of the most diversely successful guys, I know, in the motorcycle landscape.
• 24:31
  But you are talking about playing in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship, which is the creme de la creme, the top of it all, isn't it?
• 24:44
  Yeah, well, that's like I say, it was something that I never dreamed of.
• 24:47
  And when I was confronted with this, I was actually sort of taken back a bit because, whoa, you know, like, have I got personally the capability to do it?
• 24:56
  Of course.
• 24:56
  And I was doubting myself.
• 24:57
  Although, having said that…
• 25:00
  And I'd got to grips with the two-strokes, meaning the Kawasaki two-strokes that Greg Hansford had left in Australia for me to ride.
• 25:07
  So I was getting up to speed with that, and I'd had a couple of pretty good results on that.
• 25:11
  So I sort of kind of almost felt comfortable enough to go with it, but a little bit unsure of how it was going to pan out.
• 25:20
  So when I got the call from Morris Knight to say, would you come and see us, please?
• 25:26
  And I'm going...
• 25:27
  Yep, I'll be there.
• 25:28
  I'm here.
• 25:29
  Straight away.
• 25:30
  It took about two seconds.
• 25:33
  And funnily enough, I only spoke to him the other day.
• 25:36
  He was prepared to pay a hell of a lot more for it.
• 25:39
  for me, but we started off with a low ball.
• 25:43
  He said, well, I think we can give you a bike and perhaps there might be an opportunity for a 500 Grand Prix bike.
• 25:49
  And I said, well, okay, well, tell us exactly so I know where I'm at.
• 25:52
  And he said, well, we're prepared to give you a Formula One bike to do the Formula One TT Championship, the Isle of Man, Suzuka, all those big international events.
• 26:03
  island of course and uh and we'll also um we'll give you a 500 grand prix bike to run next to randy and uh he said well you know we don't have very much money of course but we can offer you something like 2 500 pound i said right that's me i'm done done and the reason not a lot of arm twisting no no not not not not at all and i'd always learned that
• 26:30
  you know, you make your own successes.
• 26:32
  And if you get paid to ride something, that's a bonus, but not necessarily the driving force, because I know that I can go out and get start money now, 600 pound.
• 26:40
  And if I got the best bikes, I'm going to win the prize money.
• 26:43
  So that double-edged sword with, well, do I argue for more money start?
• 26:49
  No, let's just cut to the chase, done.
• 26:52
  So that's what happened.
• 26:53
  I ended up with a contract.
• 26:55
  What were those bikes in Grand Prix terms like to ride back then?
• 27:00
  You talk beyond that period and Wayne Gardner says they were a real...
• 27:06
  you know, hard thing to manhandle in many respects.
• 27:09
  What would they like to race?
• 27:10
  Well, I think Wayne was lucky enough to be at the other end of the scale.
• 27:16
  Our ones were, by his definition, they would have been docile because those big V4s that he rode, that was just incredible.
• 27:26
  They're not the big bang bikes, but they're still extremely difficult to ride.
• 27:29
  They had...
• 27:30
  110 kilograms and about 120 horsepower.
• 27:35
  So it's not a bad power to weight ratio.
• 27:38
  So the first test session was booked in to go to Hamamatsu and I was to test the Formula One bike and the GP bike.
• 27:46
  So Randy and I turned up there and...
• 27:49
  And we ran, well, I ran both the Formula One bike and he specifically stayed on the 500, but I got to ride the 500 as well.
• 27:57
  And, you know, there's times when you get an opportunity to go testing and you can imagine –
• 28:04
  Lewis Hamilton, for example, being taken by, I don't know, Alpha or something like that and saying, okay, we're going to Magna Cause, the lap record is one minute, three seconds.
• 28:15
  Straight away in Lewis's mind, he'll be thinking, right, I've got to do a 102.
• 28:20
  That was the same thing with me.
• 28:22
  I went there and I thought, okay, well, the test riders get round here in a 108 or something like that.
• 28:27
  I need to be at least a 108, if not quicker.
• 28:30
  And I got within a second, I was a 109, but Randy did a 107.
• 28:34
  So straight away it was like, hmm, okay.
• 28:36
  But then I had the Formula One bike as well, and that was a different thing altogether.
• 28:42
  But on the back of that, of course, was that when I'd left in 79 to go back to Australia, the only way I could get my bike back was to do a race at Macau.
• 28:51
  Yeah.
• 28:52
  And Macau is an unbelievably great place to go for a holiday, not necessarily ride, because it's pretty dangerous.
• 28:58
  And I ended up slipping off my poor old KR 750 and hitting a wall and being picked up by a bunch of nurses and thrown into the back of an old, what looked like a J4 Bedford.
• 29:10
  It's a pinball machine there, mate.
• 29:11
  For listeners, there's just nothing.
• 29:14
  For a bike rider, there's nothing.
• 29:15
  No, well, it's on YouTube if you want to have a look at it.
• 29:19
  I come around a corner and we lost the back end and the bike hit the Armco and bounced off and took the padding with it and I hit the Armco.
• 29:26
  So it was kind of a, yeah, it was a pretty good little crash, but it hurt my shoulder and I had to go to Japan like three, I think it was three weeks later and I didn't damage anything, but it was a bit of a testing time to be able to go and get...
• 29:42
  to grips with a brand new Grand Prix bike.
• 29:45
  The other issue that I had was there was a lot of pushback from other people within the UK base because, A, Suzuki Great Britain had just hired an American.
• 29:58
  and a New Zealander.
• 30:01
  And there was no English riders in the team, of course.
• 30:04
  So while Randy's contract was to do the Grand Prix's and act as backup with a Formula One bike, mine was kind of almost reverse.
• 30:16
  Mine was to do the Formula One and act as a backup for the GP.
• 30:20
  But that was short-lived.
• 30:21
  Randy did, I think, two races and said, no, I don't want a Formula One bike, you can keep that.
• 30:26
  So I ended up with two bikes.
• 30:28
  And I ran the rest of the championship doing the Formula One and the Grand Prix's plus the Isle of Man, plus Ulster, plus Suzuka, plus Daytona.
• 30:38
  Daytona, yeah.
• 30:39
  So my workload was probably three times what he was because I was dealing with a multitude of four strokes, two strokes, Grand Prix, racing on the roads, racing on short circuits in the UK, the TT and then the Suzuka and all that sort of stuff.
• 30:55
  So my spread of...
• 30:57
  attributes, I suppose, that I sort of took with me into the following year was that I had hell of a lot of experience on a lot of different tracks.
• 31:04
  It was good.
• 31:04
  It was really good.
• 31:06
  That leads me to something that's probably a bit hard to answer, four-stroke or two-stroke?
• 31:14
  What's the favourite for you?
• 31:17
  I think any motorbike rider can have a favourite.
• 31:23
  But I was sort of right in the middle of that.
• 31:24
  It didn't actually worry me.
• 31:27
  I loved the Grand Prix bike because it was nimble, it was light, and ridden with a fair bit of aggression.
• 31:35
  It performed really well.
• 31:37
  The four-stroke, you had to – things happened slightly slower.
• 31:41
  But if you got into the rhythm of it –
• 31:43
  the four stroke was equal, pretty much equal.
• 31:46
  Okay, it was at 135 horsepower or something like that at the time, being 1000cc, but it also weighed 169 kilos.
• 31:55
  And to put it in perspective, in 81, we ran the Grand Prix at the British Grand Prix.
• 32:03
  I was on my factory bike, 500 on pole.
• 32:06
  I was also on pole on my Formula One bike, and there was like less than a second between the two.
• 32:13
  So we're talking about two completely different motorbikes, but having a reasonably good, fairly close, you know, what would you call it, result as fast as you can go on these things.
• 32:25
  They were really, really close.
• 32:26
  Not everyone, when you look at motorsport, is good across the spectrum, right?
• 32:33
  Some people are very good on a two-stroke, but maybe not as fast on a four-stroke or not as smooth, vice versa.
• 32:39
  Yeah.
• 32:40
  Why were you...
• 32:41
  so good across both.
• 32:43
  What was the key for you there?
• 32:45
  I started off on some really puss bucket bikes, honestly.
• 32:50
  Anything better than what I had before was a bonus.
• 32:52
  Honestly, the bikes that I started off racing were, they handled like a roller skate in a gravel pit.
• 32:58
  It was just like there was no sense, no rhyme, no reason for it, but they bucked and kicked and weaved, and that's what I thought was actually normal.
• 33:07
  So if you can imagine, given the bike that actually steered quite well,
• 33:11
  it actually gave you a bit more of a, well, a bit more ammunition, I suppose.
• 33:17
  And then when you get to a Grand Prix, like a 500 Grand Prix bike, which is supposedly the best that the manufacturer can produce in terms of, you know, handling, braking, power, grip, the whole lot.
• 33:30
  Well, you know, it's a lot easier to do that knowing that you've just jumped off some old monster before because everything works a lot better.
• 33:38
  In your career, there are some unbelievable highlights, mate, from Daytona win to TT success to Suzuka 8-hour.
• 33:52
  it's probably very hard to answer because of the diversity in all of them, but is there one that you really cherish?
• 33:57
  What's the one and why?
• 33:59
  Oh, it's got to be.
• 34:00
  For me, as soon as I said that, I thought of another one.
• 34:04
  That's the problem.
• 34:05
  I think probably one of the best ones was Suzuka, of course, in 1980.
• 34:10
  I mean, we turned up there.
• 34:13
  And for a multitude of reasons, not necessarily just what happened on the day, but the build up to it, the fact that I was riding with Wes Cooley.
• 34:21
  And this was basically the first time that we were going to run together.
• 34:25
  He was the Yoshimura America's rider.
• 34:27
  I was sort of Suzuki Great Britain's rider.
• 34:30
  And we got together and there wasn't much in it between us in terms of times.
• 34:35
  I was probably a little bit quicker, but the end result was that we went out during the race.
• 34:41
  Well, about a third of the way through, Wes pulled up lame.
• 34:46
  He became, well, I say pulled up lame.
• 34:50
  He's a diabetic, and his blood sugars went all out, all over the place, and he had to come in.
• 34:56
  And I had to actually finish the rest of the race.
• 34:58
  So again, this is on your shoulders?
• 35:00
  On my shoulders and half the bloody prize money.
• 35:02
  Remember I told you it would come back?
• 35:04
  So we got one and a half million yen or something split right down the middle, you know, and I'm sitting here saying to myself, well, I should get more than that because I did more than half the race, you know.
• 35:13
  But the reason why it was interesting was the fact that Eddie Lawson and Greg Hansford were running a Kawasaki.
• 35:20
  And there was less than, I think it's still one of the closest fought races.
• 35:24
  It was down to about five seconds or something like that.
• 35:26
  I'm not sure exactly the end result, but it got to a point where I couldn't do one more lap.
• 35:34
  When I went across the line, if I hadn't made the eight-hour mark, I would have had to do one more lap.
• 35:42
  and that would have put me over my maximum allocation.
• 35:45
  Yeah.
• 35:45
  So it was that close.
• 35:47
  And I remember the two people that were working, one of them on an abacus, that was Pops, and Neville Doyle counting his fingers, they were trying to work out whether I would exceed that or not.
• 36:01
  And I can remember coming over the start-finish line there and –
• 36:07
  suddenly the whole place just lit up, you know, the lights came on and the flash of all the people were there.
• 36:16
  It was just amazing.
• 36:17
  It was one of the best things that I'd ever done.
• 36:20
  But I guess the reason being is that the effort that you have to put in, 37 degrees of temperature and you have this expectation, you do 23 laps and you come in and you – I mean, nowadays they've got it so easy.
• 36:33
  They've got swimming pools and all that sort of stuff and massage people and –
• 36:37
  But now, you know, like I'd come in, I'd do 23 laps, I'd get off the bike and I'd sit somewhere and have a pro carry sweat, I think they call those isotonic drinks, horrible things, and just wait for my turn to go out again.
• 36:48
  Well, I'd done that for a couple of times and then when I was expecting to come in to stay in...
• 36:53
  I was told to stay on the bike.
• 36:55
  No reason, just go, away you go, no explanation at all.
• 36:58
  So I did another 23 laps and then they put Wes out for about three laps or four laps, that's all he could do.
• 37:06
  But that gave us enough time for me to finish the race.
• 37:13
  That's part two done of my chat with Cros.
• 37:15
  Make sure you check out the final instalment.
• 37:18
  Part three covers his sudden decision to stop bike racing, the move into touring cars and more.
• 37:24
  See you soon.
• 37:27
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 37:31
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 37:35
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 37:44
  Listener.