Having finally got the outfit to a meeting, the first time out at Cadwell Park was best forgotten. A second outing at Three Sisters produced the first inklings of what we were supposed to be doing and a result, or more accurately, a finish.

This has naturally brought us into contact with other crews and the arcane talk of the paddock is becoming familiar. The fellows that hold on to the handlebars of racing outfits call us platform types their ‘monkeys’. In truth this is just to justify their presence in the team – there is a view from below that the bloke behind the handlebars is only there because you can’t reach the throttle from the platform when you’re going round left-handers…

This is basically the way it goes. The front wheel ballast, sorry, the handlebar chappie gives it the gas, changes up and down and does the braking. Meanwhile, the platform rider using his skill and timing alternates his centre of gravity between the rear wheel and the extreme edges of the outfit in order to keep traction on the rear wheel in the areas where acceleration is needed and to make the thing go round corners at an acceptable rate (and stay on the track). This is not always as easy as it might seem. Watching for the next corner that your vehicle is careering towards can be a bit difficult whilst you are busily grinding the visor of your helmet on the track. So, in addition to your finely-tuned sense of balance and equilibrium, an ability to visualise your position on the track is also needed. Alternatively you can try to work out from when the engine does something unexpected that the rider has cocked it up again and it’s time to bail out.

What does not aid matters, nor the other bloke’s perception of your contribution, is to get it wrong yourself. For example – doing the leaning-over-the-back-of-the-bike bit of things as the outfit enters a series of right/left/right esses and getting the blasted novice bib tangled in the suspension. The result of this scenario is that you become pinned to the rear mudguard of the bike and whilst fighting to free yourself, the left handed part of the turn becomes a Laurel & Hardy-esque sidecar-in-the-air-trip-across-the-grass affair. Still, you need to remind the rider that you are there from time to time. Fortunately the racing authorities realise that the man in the chair is a step ahead of the game and allow him to lose the hated Wally Bib five races before the poor sap behind the handlebars.

My opinion of sidecars hasn’t been changed one iota by my experiences in the chair. A measure of how much control the whole thing is generally under can be gauged from out comments to one another the first time that the heavily modified Muzz Mk 2 was tested on the track. A binding front suspension linkage caused the steering to shimmy violently, like a belly dancer on speed. He thought I was messing about on the platform, I thought he was scrubbing in the new tyres. Despite all this, numerous friends seeing that I havn’t died now fancy a ‘go in the chair’. Unfortunately for them, seriously flawed though the concept is, it is also dangerously addictive. A Windle F2 outfit next season, perhaps?



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