Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.'R A .: ·:aA e:· Doing the TT with the Britten OQ : · c nfulfilled oas By Stephen Burns Photos by Nigel Kinrade •• I espi te the misgivings many p eop le seem to have about the place, this is still the place to win as far as I am concerne d . The mystiq ue of the Isle of Man is still str o ng no matter w hat sphere of the .sport you are involved in. It is my ambition; my goal to win here. Only then will I feel I ach ieved something with this bike." John Britten is an odd character. He is one of those rare people that yo u cou ld class as bo th an in trovert and .ext rovert. Soft-spoken and withd raw n he can some times appear, bu t w ith in minutes his character cha nges as his pass ion is aroused by so mething, or somebody . Talk of the Isle of Man IT ' would seem to do just that. The above words are his. Much was made of the Britten's second visit to the IT in the weeks leading up to th e ev en t. Andrew Stroud had easily won the Daytona Twins race in March, albeit agains t seemin gly lackluster opposition, but upon coming to Europe (after returning home in read iness fo r th e two major act ua l ro adcourse events on the calendar), the Britten team members, unbeknownst to them, were abo u t to embark on what wa s probably the mo st stressful few weeks in the team's short history. Isle of Man IT veteran, and 1993 F1 winner, Nick Jefferies wa s one of the three riders scheduled to ride the V-twin at the North West 2DD in Ireland during mid-Ma y, and the IT at the start of June. He explains the somewha t troubl esome start to the even t. "They brought the bikes to Mallor y Pa rk in England righ t after Day tona while they were still in 11DOcc trim. We had one test day there, and things wen t pretty well. That was my first time on the bike, and im med ia tely I was impressed. "John then had to return home with the bikes to re-build th em to lODDcc specifications to comply with the IT and other European race re gulations. We got to the North West and we just had a multitude of problems, and in the relatively short amount of practice time we were struggling." The Irish meeting was one the team wanted to forget in a hu rry . Unfortunately for John Britten and his enthusiastic followers, things were going to get worse. New Zealander Robert Holden and Irish rider Mark Farmer were scheduled to ride the machines at the IT. Holden pulled out midway through practice week claiming he hadn't time to get the b ike set up properly to his liking. Farmer, however, had parked his bike in the garage halfway through practice week feeling that there was no more work to be done . He was race ready. "We locked Mark's bike away as he had requested on the Wednesday night," explained Britten. "However, he came to me on Thursday and asked for just one more lap on it, jus t to make •• sure." 18 It was one lap too many. Farmer is thought to have been high-sided into a wall on an ultra-fast section of the cir- cuit. He d ied instantly. The team was devastated. "I was shocked mo re than in an y other time in my life," says Britten. "I asked myself a lot of qu estions. Wh y were we here? Why are we racing? That sort of thing. I tell you, if it wasn 't for Nick Jefferies I don't know if the team would have pulled through. He w as absolutely b rilliant. He car r ied the w h ole team through th e re st o f the event." Jefferies himself was modest in his assessment of the situation.. "It wa s a very straight-forward decision," he says. "You have to go on. There's nothing to . be gained from stopping and going home. If the accident had been caused by some kind of mechanical failure that in some way we could not decipher then there wouldn't hav e been any point in going on, but the accident wasn't caused by any kind of failure to the motorcycle . . "Mark didn't deserve to go at so ·young an age (30),but accidents happen in this sport and you have to carry on. We had to carry on for Mark because he loved racing - we all do . Everyone mourns hi s loss, all of u s, but racing goes on. If he were here now, he 'd agree." Jefferies' .pragmatism gave the squad _ the strength to carry on. With Holden's withdrawal, Britten was still keen to get two bikes onto the start line. He subsequently tried , in vain, to get his former rider, and former New Zealand Fl cha mpionship runner-up, Jason McEwan on the bi ke for the conclud ing Senior race. McEwan was making his IT debut, concentrating on the Supersport 6DD event, but he was willing to give it a go. Unfortunately, the last practice session was wet and he failed to qualify . And so to the first of the two races, the F1 on June 4. The "race" was a farce. On a course that was 38 miles long, weather played a key element in th e events of the six-lap race. Knowing that rain was falling or about to fall on most parts of the track, the organizers failed to delay the start, which would have allowed everyone a chance to see how conditions would work out. To cut a long story short, the ra in came down almost immediately and so did the mist on the Mountain - so much so that you apparently couldn't see you r hand in front of your face. Many of the top riders pulled in after one lap claiming conditions were too dangerous, including Jefferies. Nick Jefferies lands the Britten from the Ballaugh Bridge jump on the Isle of Man IT course. Jefferies was running seventh In the F1 race until the V-twin started misfiring. j " I came in at th e end of the lap to change tires, " expla ined Jefferies. "I couldn't believe they didn't stop it there and then . They could have got everyone back to tbe pits , got the bikes checked over, and restarted the race over four laps. Everyone would have known what the weather was like, and would have selected the right tires." Jefferies con tinued on for a second lap, but the organizers finally stopped the race at the end of the second lap. He was lying seventh at the time. The race was subsequently re-run the next day over the full race distance of six laps. It was not a race to remember for the Britten squad. Jefferies was a comfortable seventh at the end of the opening lap - a nice, handy position to be in for such a long race, and he was averaging over 117 mph to boot. On the second lap, however, he encountered a misfire. At his first-lap pit stop (at the end of the second lap) Jefferies lost a

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