problem later on, I’ll ride round it.
At Kyalami in 1999, I had problems with the brakes of the second bike sticking on all weekend. It was a similar problem to the one Aaron Slight had struggled with for a couple of years. We racked our brains as to why I was suddenly having this problem, which effectively meant that I only had one bike to use for the whole weekend. I kept returning to the pits, shouting, ‘It’s stuck on again! Do something about this!’ I was seriously pissed off because we were wasting half a session doing stupid things like cleaning the brake pads. I had tried going softer on the brakes and this hadn’t seemed to work. It didn’t help that it was the first meeting of the season and I desperately wanted to get going.
Whatever I was doing differently, it was heating the brake pad up so much that it was locking inside the calliper. We changed the pads from performance friction to sintered, but still had the same problem. Then we tried changing the forks and yokes – still nothing. So we had to machine the end of the brake pad to give it more clearance. Instead of 0.6 mm we made it 0.8 mm so that it was now rattling around inside the calliper. It did solve the problem, although we never really understood why it had suddenly occurred – and on just the one bike. Slick’s theory was that it was because I was using the brakes a lot harder as soon as I was coming out of the pits. After the second round, the guy from Brembo, the brakes manufacturers, found a permanent solution by increasing the pad clearance. That never used to be checked, and maybe it had changed, but it is now one of the things that is checked as a matter of course.
Another problem we had in 1995, when we were forced to ditch the carbon discs, was that the brakes were more inboard of the wheel and the mudguard came further over. That meant that the air struggled to get to the brakes to cool the calliper down. The first idea was to get more air into the standard radiators, then the team decided to cut holes in the mudguard and cover it in gauze to stop dirt getting through. Straight away, the calliper temperature dropped from 130 degrees C to 90 degrees C.
Hard on the brakes and changing down to first. My arms are almost locked and I’m pushing my body backwards, trying to stop my weight from going over the front end.
The Brembo guy would always come round to ask if everything was okay, but I never found him that useful. If things were going wrong, there never seemed to be much anyone could do about it. The problems were at their worst during my year with Honda in 1996 when I had to break in new discs at every meeting, wasting half a practice session through having to brake nice and gently. Eight times out of ten I would have to come into the garage and say, ‘The brakes are juddering again.’ It should have been someone else’s job to do something like take the bike out onto the road to run the new brakes in. I didn’t like to mess around and be constantly experimenting. Once I had found something that worked, I preferred to stick with it. And this would normally be done at a special test session, not during practice and qualifying for the races, when I wanted to concentrate on tyres and set-up.
Even so, I would say that in nearly every race I have competed in over the last few years I have had to adjust the brakes during the race. I like to have the brake lever quite hard and tight, while some riders like to pull it in quite a long way before it bites. At tracks that are hard on the brakes, the lever would often work its way in towards the bar and become spongy, meaning I couldn’t apply enough force on the brakes. So a small adjuster wheel was fitted which I could turn a couple of clicks to move the lever back out to its normal position. At another circuit, though, I might never have to use the adjuster.
I’m also unusual in that I have never used my back brake, on the right footrest. If you ask ten riders, six probably don’t use it and four do. I think that if I had ever tried to use it, I would have lost time. And the position I rode in meant that when I was braking hard I was so far over the front of the bike that I couldn’t feel what was going on at the back brake. It’s more of a psychological comfort for me, knowing it’s there should anything go wrong with the front brake. Then again, even if that were the case the back brake would hardly slow you down at all because it needs to be used four or five times to get some heat into it.
A few people change their back brake to make it a thumb lever on their left handlebar. Michael Doohan started all that when the injuries to his leg meant that he couldn’t feel the back brake any more. I tried having one on during 1997, but found that I didn’t use it and took it off for the following year. I guess it’s the guys who go into corners scrubbing off speed who tend to use the back brake more than others.
If you are riding a four-cylinder bike and you go down through the gearbox quickly, you tend to lock the back wheel up anyway, and a lot of riders like that. A Ducati, however, is not as easy to slide into corners because the engine braking is so different. It does not stop some Ducati riders doing it, such as Troy Bayliss and Neil Hodgson, but the four-cylinder riders seem to be able to do it a lot more easily. When I was changing from fifth to first, I tended to go down a couple of gears and leave a very small gap before going down another couple. That helped me keep the bike as stable as possible and not have the back end weaving all over the place. You never seem to see guys riding twin-cylinder bikes out of shape as much as the four-cylinder riders.
However much preparation is carried out on getting the brakes right, things are bound to go wrong. One major problem is the discs overheating, especially at circuits where you can’t generate enough speed to cool them down – again, like Donington. I have had problems with warped discs, when the lever starts pulsing in your hand, and with bits of shit getting onto the discs and affecting their performance.
At Monza in 1998, my brakes were absolutely knackered and warped in the first race because of all the heat that is generated in the discs around that circuit. I was lying third behind the two Hondas, which were much quicker than my bike that year. But on the final few laps I couldn’t outbrake anyone because they were juddering so much, so I ended up dropping down to sixth place. And there have been lots of times, especially when braking too late while trying to do one fast lap for qualification, when I have run on at a corner. Again, that happens more at the fast circuits like Monza and Hockenheim, at the bottom of fast straights.
The first corner at Monza was changed in 2001 to suit Formula One cars, but it became tighter and therefore more dangerous for bike riders. At the old corner it was possible to have three or four riders braking together and very often one ran through the gravel and back onto the track because he couldn’t slow down in time. There have been a few hairy moments there, but none worse than that involving Jamie Whitham during practice a few years ago. He came into that first corner at 180mph and his front discs just shattered – a huge chunk went missing. He was travelling so fast that the gravel wasn’t able to slow him down and he just managed to pick a line that avoided the wall. He admitted that he had absolutely shit himself!
Another time when riders tend to overshoot is when they have been slipstreaming someone down a straight and are approaching the corner a little bit faster than they would normally. The trick is to brake hard, but obviously not so hard that you lose the front end. Very often you have to run round the outside and come back onto the track.
I have never really considered myself to be someone who is especially good on the brakes, but I’ve still won races by outbraking riders into the final bend. I beat Chili in 1998 at Assen when he fell off, and I won my first race on a Honda in 1996 by outbraking Aaron Slight at the end of the straight at Monza. The following year I did the same to Neil Hodgson. He was pushed outside the racing line where there is a lot more dust and dirt on the track, and he ran on at the next corner. Clearly, the more a track has been used, the more rubber there is down on the surface and the better the grip is. If you try to brake hard on the loose stones and bits of loose rubber, the chances are that you are going to go down.
The idea is also to keep both tyres on the track. There is footage of me going into corners and braking so hard that the rear wheel is off the ground. And I’ll never forget the time during my first TT win in 1989 when I was having a real battle with Steve Hislop, bunny-hopping at the bottom of the hill entering Governor’s Bridge in the 750cc production class because I was braking so late and so hard.
So, at the right sort of corner, and if it