Niall Mackenzie: The Autobiography. Stuart Barker

It cost a fiver for the morning and a fiver for the afternoon. Top value!

      I really enjoyed it and decided that I might as well have a crack at racing just to see what it was all about. But I have to come clean here and admit that my first ever race wasn’t actually at Knockhill as most people think and as I’ve told everyone over the years. I said I’d won my first ever race because it looked good on my CV and to a certain extent it was true because I did win my first race at Knockhill. But my first actual attempt at racing was at Carnaby racetrack just north of Bridlington in the north of England the weekend before my Knockhill debut. It was just a wee white lie that sounded good when I was trying to get sponsorship so I don’t mind admitting it now. May I take this opportunity to apologise for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused!

      I went out in the first practice session at Carnaby which was for production bikes and race bikes together, and I soon started passing some of the proper race bikes through the corners on my little RD350.

      Obviously, they would blast past me on the straights again because they were so much faster but then I’d get them back at the next corner. After a few laps of this I realised I was going okay. Strangely enough I wasn’t nervous at all, even going into the first corner of my first race which should have been a very scary experience with everyone fighting for the same piece of track, elbows and knees everywhere. I was so pumped up that I didn’t care if I crashed or died or anything. I suppose I must have had some kind of natural feel for it; either that or God was on my side because there was no reason why I should have known what I was doing. It just happened and I somehow managed to make it round to the finish and in a pretty respectable position too.

      I finished third in the 500cc production class at Carnaby among some pretty hot riders and I knew who they were because I’d been to Carnaby with the Rae brothers before. There were riders like Geoff Crust (who’d later become my mechanic), Charlie Corner, Curt Langan and Gordon Allott and they were all really hard racers.

      I remember coming home with this little wooden plaque with ‘Carnaby 3rd’ written on it and I kept it in my pocket for a week. I don’t know how many times a day I would get it out of my pocket at work and just look at it. I couldn’t believe I had actually won something, even though I hadn’t won the race. I’ve still got that plaque to this day and it’s the best trophy I’ve ever won.

      I didn’t get any money for racing at Carnaby (in fact it cost me £15 to enter and £5 in fuel) and later that year they even stopped giving out those plaques and replaced them with certificates. No comparison. I loved my little plaque.

      The effect of that first race meeting on me was incredible and very difficult to explain. I was on a high for a week afterwards and totally hooked. If I’d finished last it might have been a different story but then again, I’m really good at justifying things to myself so I’d probably have just thought ‘Right, next time I’ll try not to be last’ and kept working away at it. But I got third place and was just over the moon.

      I didn’t race against my friends and travelling companions Alistair and Stewart because they were in the pukka racing classes but I’m not sure what they thought after I’d done so well in my first race. They sort of congratulated me through gritted teeth but even if they did feel a bit put out as I suspected, they could still fall back on the fact that they were riding in the pure racing classes while I was in the less prestigious production class. I suppose in a way, I stole a bit of attention away from them and after they had helped me so much they maybe had a right to feel a bit annoyed. I’d probably have felt the same had the situation been reversed.

      Incidentally, I hadn’t gone to Carnaby to avoid having my debut race in front of people who knew me, it’s just that the Raes offered to take my bike in their van so it simply made sense to go. It was a bit too far too ride my RD all the way to England then hope it would be in good enough shape to race, but I used to ride it to Knockhill and race it because it wasn’t too far from Fankerton. The sump of the RD was permanently wired up so all I did when I got to the circuit was take the indicators and number plate off, tape up the lights and it was ready to race. Sometimes I would ride my bike to the circuit, win a few races on it and then ride it home again! And at lunchtimes, I’d often take it for a practice session round the little roads that run past the circuit just to make sure everything was okay. I’m sure the police wouldn’t have been too chuffed to see me with the lights taped up and no indicators but I never got caught.

      The week after Carnaby I had my first of many races at Knockhill in Fife, where I finished second in my first event of the day, which was the 500cc production race. I then won the invitation race, which was for the top fifteen in each production class, later on in the afternoon. I was up against bigger bikes like Suzuki GSX1000s and I remember it was future world endurance champion Brian Morrison’s first ever race day. He won the big production class and went on to have a successful career in the British championships and in World Superbike as well as in endurance racing.

      I got £70 for that invitation win which was great money considering I was taking home about £80 a week from the electricity board, where I had been working since the beginning of 1981. And I got £40 for finishing second in the proddie race so I took home more than a week’s wages. I mean, the thrill of racing was more than enough but to get money for doing it too? I couldn’t believe it.

      My mum was there to see me win that day. By then she had accepted that I was going to go racing anyway and she was never really against it in the way my dad probably would have been.

      I actually got a bollocking from Jimmy Rae after that race because I started waving my arms and legs frantically over the finish line when I realised I had won and I suppose he must have thought it was dangerous. I don’t think I was even aware that I was doing it though, because I was so ecstatic.

      That night I went down to The Pines pub for a few drinks and danced the night away to Soft Cell and Simple Minds or whatever New Romantic music was being played at the time.

      I did the full season of the 500cc Scottish Production Championship in 1981 and at one stage it looked as if I might actually win it. However, lack of experience caught me out a few times, especially in the wet, and I eventually finished second which I suppose was still pretty good for a first attempt.

      The championship was only held over three circuits, because that’s all Scotland had to offer. We raced at Knockhill, East Fortune and Beveridge Park in Kirkcaldy and that place was a total nightmare. Donnie McLeod, my future team-mate in the Silverstone Armstrong squad once said you can only sign the entry form for Beveridge Park once and then your hand won’t do it again! He wasn’t far wrong.

      It’s a left-handed circuit that runs through a couple of parks and it’s pretty fast, certainly too fast for the state of the track and the number of trees and obstacles round about it. A lot of people got killed there and it just wasn’t fit to race on. On one of the corners you had to stick your head through a hedge because that was the racing line. But the classic corner was the one that had the main road as the run off area! If you overshot, you went onto the main road, round a roundabout and then back onto the track again. It was totally mad. I had always wanted to do that just for a laugh because I had seen lots of sidecars doing it but at the same time I was always after a decent result so I never got round to doing it. Knowing me I’d probably have got lost and gone right into town!

      I also raced at some events in the north of England like Silloth, which was an airfield circuit about fifteen miles west of Carlisle and where Steve Hislop’s brother Gary was tragically killed. I won the 500 Production Club Championship there in my first year, which I was pretty chuffed with. Croft was another English circuit I raced at and I actually won there on a proper racing bike. I rode a Yamaha TZ350 which belonged to a guy named Alex Beith who ran a car auction business in Glasgow and who I had gotten to know quite well. He was going to sell the bike and knew I was doing all right at the racing so he said ‘What about racing it to help me sell it?’ So I rode it at Knockhill and finished third, then I won on it at Silloth and then again at Croft so the year ended on a high note for me – and the bike sold straight after that race at Croft too.

      It was a nice bike to ride because it had a Spondon chassis and it handled really well. After riding production bikes,