Turn your son into the next Stoner

You like bikes and you’ve got kids – but what do you do if they show talent on two wheels? Here’s our invaluable guide to propelling your offspring to racing’s elite stratosphere

Ask anyone what makes a race champion and the answers are always the same. Speed, style and commitment. A lack of career opportunities (read: distractions) focuses the hunger further. A few years ago I was lucky enough to ride Mick Doohan’s NSR500 at Catalunya and after being blown away by the vicious tear-your-arms-out power delivery I grabbed a coffee with his mum.

Being reasonably new to this children lark I asked her what Mick was like as a child and was pretty stunned by the reply. “Ah, Mick was as thick as pig shit at schooling,” she said without a flicker of sarcasm. It came as a bit of surprise but it got me thinking. According to his mum, all young Michael was interested in was bunking off school to ride bikes. He wasn’t stupid – that’s not what she meant – he just had no interest in anything but riding bikes.

Clearly he wasn’t daft, for here was a multiple World Champion who made deep warmongering psychology something of his own during his unassailable reign. His guile and cunning and subsequent successful business transactions were obviously not the calculated actions of someone ‘as thick as pig shit.’ But how did the prepubescent Doohan go from a normal kid messing around on a field bike into the most fearsome racer Grands Prix have ever seen? Is there a specific formula to follow, and if so how do you set your child on this path so that by the time they’re 20 they’re keeping you in the lifestyle to which you always aspired?

But first, don’t despair if your kid isn’t hitting the highest SATS results. Perhaps there’s another talent worth fostering. And if it’s cultivated in the right way their earning potential could be as gargantuan as Casey’s. Here’s how to tap it...

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Field bike

Field Bike

This is where it starts

Bike: £250
Helmet: £70
Wellies: £5
Fuel: Free, siphoned out of the family car  
Total: £325

Everyone, and I mean everyone worth their salt, starts riding bikes on grass while they’re still in Junior school. Show me a famous racer and I’ll show you their family photo album with pictures to prove the above statement. Schwantz, Rainey, Doohan, Rossi – they’ve all ridden round fields in size three wellies and goalkeeper gloves. It’s the law. It’s where it all begins. It’s the embryo of breeding motorcycle success.

Maybe it’s one of those paving-slab-only, hard plastic-wheeled electric bikes from ToysRus with stabilisers. Possibly, for the lucky few, it’s a bullet-proof Yamaha PW50. The more mature amongst you may have started the same way but a bit later on in the schooling curriculum. For me it was a Yamaha two-stroke step-thru, my next door neighbour had a C90 with knobblies, the lad half a mile away an RM80 Suzuki that we were all secretly shit-scared of. What made the RM80 even more terrifying was his psychotic border collie that used to try and bite you while you were riding it.

It doesn’t matter what they start off on, really. The younger your kid is, the better. Their capacity for learning is startling and it’s in these first few weeks of riding that you’ll get the first inkling as to whether they’ve got the X-factor or not. See yourself as a motorcycling Simon Cowell (or Cheryl Cole, depending on your preference) and be honest. If they’re screaming and crying every time you shoe-horn them onto the saddle, bike’s aren’t for them.

The clues are obvious with appetite being the best gauge. If they’re always pestering the hell out of you to ride, regardless of the weather, you know they’re keen. At this stage, don’t panic. Their new-found love of motorcycles is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it’s just a thing. As a motorcycling parent, it’s now up to you whether you want to exploit this or not. They will fall off and they will cry, but at the age of four your child is completely indestructible and you shouldn’t be put off by such things. They won’t be shy of a few slides and full-throttle opportunities. However, you’ve got real grounds for concern when they combine the two – without blinking. Keep a family-size tin of Elastoplast on top of the fridge and Anthisan cream for the inevitable out-of-control crashes into nettles.

Bailey Drew here (6) is a case in hand. He’s living the Year 2 dream. 50cc LEM auto, posh crash helmet and some snazzy wellies. He’s got the signed Valentino poster on the bedroom wall and when he’s maxed out with the throttle cables stretched he’s obviously on a hot Donington qualifying lap point three ahead of Valentino. It’s play with a serious edge. An edge that teaches him respect, control, balance, mechanical sympathy and complex, multi-tasking decision making and spilt-second coordination.

Step-dad Jason rides bikes. “The only racing I’ve done is up and down the A1 but don’t write that,” he laughs. “We introduced him to bikes and quads quite early on, really,” says Jason while mum Emma nods in agreement. “It just teaches them that mechanical things need to be respected and there’s no better time to learn, really.” Young Bailey here is at a critical stage of his future GP career, he just doesn’t know it. Whether it’s just a bit of fun or something much more serious is a decision this nipper needs to take soon.

  • Proceed: If they hassle you to ride again, sneak out to the woods on the bike, ride even when it’s pissing down with rain, walk back into the house covered in mud after a crash but don’t cry
  • Draw a halt to proceedings: If they scream the first time you put them on the saddle, prefer horses instead, watch Peppa Pig when the sun’s shining

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Minimoto

Minimoto

Let’s go racing for real!

Bike: £400 - £2,500
Riding gear: £600
Entry fees/race costs: £2,500
Fuel: £500
Total: £5,000+

So you’ve decided to take the plunge and step into real racing. Good on ya. Now welcome to a world of high cost, parents shrieking at their offspring and sleepless weekends. And you’ll need one of these: pocket bikes, minimotos – they’re all the same thing. Small, angry, nervous, tricky to master and faster than you’d imagine when you’ve only got a 30 kilo midget on board. They’ve been responsible for fostering some audacious talent. Haga and Rossi being two good examples. Yes, they’ve got no suspension and are impossibly small but there’s no better place to hone your child’s racing craft than on one of these little ankle-biters. I’m well qualified to make that last statement having broken my left ankle on one.

This is my youngest son Adam with his aged (but very fast) Polini 4.2 GP2 Steel. That’s 4.2 as in 4.2bhp and steel as in steel frame. This is the intro class for nippers and they can start racing these things as young as six. Adam hasn’t actually raced yet. Having been involved in racing for over 20 years, dad’s understandably reluctant. All he’s done so far is masses of practice days where he can go at his own pace and go when the time suits me. Championships are a different kettle of fish involving unpleasant things such as caravans and chemical toilets and, shock horror, taking time off school (and work) to go.

It’s a friendly scene in the UK, there are some absolutely cracking circuits and some really nice people in charge of the events. Nobody organises minimoto racing to get rich so there’s a refreshing absence of commercial bullshit. Entry fees cover circuit hire and staff are all volunteers. If you just want to go ‘testing’ £20 buys you at least four hours of track time on most kart circuits. Absolute bargain.

Maintenance is a different matter. Having fingers like Cumberland sausages is a definite disadvantage as these things are microscopically small. You’ll also need to be fairly adept with doing jobs like fitting piston rings, changing gearing and adjusting/replacing the finicky centrifugal clutches which bite at a dizzy 8,000rpm. We picked this bike up for £600 and it’s cost me about £200 in tyres and parts over two years of intermittent use. Serious parents throw a clutch (£40) and new tyres (£80) at them every meeting. Really, truly serious parents also have a spare bike set up for wet conditions, tyre warmers, huge awnings with plastic flooring and trucks that wouldn’t look out of place in a BSB paddock. Not much pressure there, then. A brand new minimoto will cost you around £2,000. Polini, GRC and Metmachex all make great competitive bikes. Avoid Chinese stuff at all costs.

But regardless of what level of investment has been made, watching the kids on track is astounding. Big budgets, or questionable parental issues (living your dream through your offspring) clearly doesn’t make the kid fast. It’s the will to win and sheer unadulterated ability that marks out the special riders and, in that sense, it’s a very pure sport. That’s what you’re looking for at this stage – whether your kid’s got the fire in his (or her) belly is more important than actual race results. Don’t expect them to win on their very first race, any first meeting is an incredibly intimidating experience but you might be amazed at what your kid can achieve on their inaugural time out. After four races, when the pair of you are both used to meetings, that’s when you’ll see what your lad is capable of. If they’re running top 3 and start winning, the signs are good. If not, continue to the end of the season as they may take longer to shine. There’s no point in buying the latest thing – your kid might want it, but right now it’s not what they need.

As a route to GP superstardom, this is the critical point. Valentino Rossi was winning everything in the minimoto class at the age of seven, and it’s here that they learn race tactics, getting off the line first, how to recover a slide and how to look good in front of the camera. Crucial for the budding racer.

  • Proceed: If they master race craft and sneaky position-grabbing tactics. The first trip to the St John’s wagon will subsequently tell you really how much they want to do this…
  • Draw a halt to proceedings: If they cry in the holding area, hide while you’re packing the van, tell you you’re a horrible parent

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Metrakit

Metrakit

Now it’s getting serious...

Bike: £800 - £4,000
Riding gear: £1,000
Entry fees/race costs: £1,000
Two flights to Spain: £400
Fuel: £700  
Total: £7,000+

This is Bradley Ray and he’s our next Scott Redding. I can say this with some conviction because not only have I seen how good he is on track but he’s also just been signed up by Roger Keys at Fab-Racing, the man who paved the way for Mr Redding into GPs. He’s amongst good company. And this is Bradley’s Metrakit – a sort of half-way house between a minimoto and a full-blown 125. There’s a healthy, 10-round Metrakit British Championship running at UK kart tracks. This one’s actually a 70cc Metrakit, developing a real 16bhp at the back wheel. That’s good enough for 100mph. Bradley is a battle hardened 11 years-old and the winner of literally hundreds of trophies and multiple British Championships. What were you doing at 11?

Bradley has mapped out his future. “I want to be in MotoGP,” says the likeable Kent-based pre-teen. I asked him the same “where do you want to end up?” question last year and got the same laser-stare, non flinching reply then. Clearly he means it. Dad Kevin, a builder by trade is more pragmatic. “We’ve sunk everything onto Brad to get here. I used to have a nice 996 Ducati and a half-decent car. Now we just work all the hours and spend it all on racing.”

Bradley has a Metrakit 50 and 70 and a GRC Minimoto (he’s leading all three British Championships) but this is no cheque-book racing set-up. Their race transporter is an ex-Kent county council converted library that runs on £1 a litre bio diesel. This is blag, cadge and scrounge racing, and if you go this far you’ll need to do the same. List price for next year’s model is somewhere in the region of £3,300 and a spare set of wheels, discs and wets will cost £450. Cost-wise it’s a massive jump up from the minimotos.

As the Metrakit demographic coincides with year seven and senior school, there are also a lot of other factors to consider at this point. Schooling will suffer if they become too preoccupied with their racing, do you want that to happen? If they’ve shown promise at astro-physics, do you really want them to be a bike racer? And within a couple of years (they start young these days) the lure of the opposite sex is an obvious one. This must be dissuaded at all costs - girls make budding racers weak and slow. Use the manner in which your kid deals with these peer-pressure distractions as a barometer of commitment.

Secondhand, if and when they appear, you may be able to get a 50 for as little as £800 or a 70 for £1,200 but they’re pretty rare so it’s a seller’s market at the moment. In the UK there isn’t a logical step for the kids after Metrakit. In Spain they move up to Pre-GP which are detuned 30bhp 125GP bikes on slicks. In the UK they’d go straight from a Metrakit 70 on kart tracks to full-house 125GP on big tracks which strikes me as a high risk strategy. Which is why our ambitious kids go racing in Spain after they’ve realised that the UK system has failed them. And at least the weather’s better…

  • Proceed: If they start to complain of a lack of power, diminishing tyre grip or being slightly under-geared between turns three and five
  • Draw a halt to proceedings: If they highside and highside. And then say they’ve got a girlfriend...

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125GP

125GP

Congratulations – you made it!

Bike:  £8,200
Riding gear: £1,200
Entry fees/race costs: £15,000
Fuel: £1,000  
Total: £23,000+

Weighing about as much as a cheap mountain bike and shoving out as much as 50hp, these pure race bikes are not things to be trifled with. They’re about as wide as a razor blade (and so’s the powerband) and are fantastically finicky and difficult to extract the best from, both in terms of suspension and engine set-up. The precise technical requirements of dialling-in a 125 is a fantastic training ground to develop a young rider’s analytical approach. It’s no coincidence that the Casey Stoners of this World cut their teeth in this class.

A Honda RS125 will do the job in the UK but if your ambitions are loftier, you’ll be needing the best Aprilia  you can afford. If your nipper wants to make the grade, this is the class that attracts the most International rookie attention. In the UK at BSB level, the competition may be fierce but in the Spanish CEV series it steps up another gear with lots of full factory equipment, big bucks sponsorship and riders with actual GP experience. This is the hotbed of talent that gets cherry-picked to move into GPs.

So you’ve worked through the ranks of minimoto and and now you’re in 125s. You’re not there yet. First you must dominate in Britain before doing the same again in Spain. As a parent, now is the time to do a bankjob and get that overdraft sorted. “A season in the UK at BSB level will cost you £15k with no major mishaps,” says dad Steve, wincing involuntarily. “That’s aside from the cost of the bike, mind.”

Steve is clearly already knee-deep in trouble he wished he’d never started. Make no mistake, once you make it this far you’re into serious money. You have to travel around Europe, you need the latest kit or you won’t be competitive, your kid will hurt themselves when they crash – it can all be frightfully traumatic on mind, body and wallet. “Trouble is,” he says, “you don’t know where to stop.”

Shaun started innocently enough using Radcliffe’s indoor minimoto circuit on a  Tuesday evening when he was a relatively ‘old’ 13. “We noticed it was only a fiver if you took your own bike so that’s when we took the plunge and bought a minimoto.” His first race was at Rowrah in Cumbria. “He finished dead last but really enjoyed it,” says Steve. “It just kind of snowballed after that.” Shaun’s 125 career is now picking up pace. A third place at Snetterton’s BSB round is quite an achievement in your first season of Nationals. If you’ve got here with your kid, you know they’re keen - now it’s more about you. Can you afford it, and are the sacrifices to your family and work worth it? This is a monster undertaking, make no mistake.

“We’ll do another season in the UK, we’ve still got a lot to learn about the class,” says Steve. Make a mental note of the name – Shaun Horsman – he’s climbed the rickety ladder of racing progress pretty quickly and with top three results at National level he’s clearly got a grasp of the job. But the reality is that unless they can make the jump to Spain and get picked up, even at this level, after all these years, the dream of GP stardom may crumble into dust at the very last hurdle.

  • Proceed: If they get faster and faster every time they ride the bike, win every race in sight
  • Draw a halt to proceedings: If your bank manager starts trying to get hold of you at the weekend

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Conclusion

Conclusion

From the ages of four to 17 this merry jape will cost you the thick end of £50k. As some old sage said, “you may as well kneel in a gravel car park, burn a big pile of money and smash yourself repeatedly over the head with a house brick.” Propelling your kid into the GP world is not for the faint-hearted.

But if your nipper has got talent and you’re in a position to shape and influence their future (and enjoy the experience) there’s no doubt the trip can be a rewarding one. A quick stroll through most race paddocks will uncover enclaves of acne-ridden teenie racers. It never ceases to amaze me how grown-up, sharp, worldly-wise and tough they are. Kids making adult-sized decisions.

I know someone who is convinced that all bike racers have suffered or do suffer from ADD. Perhaps that is the case – low boredom thresholds are definitely a strong characteristic of all bike racers. Parents’ evening may give you an insight into your kid’s race potential here – racing may also be a great way to avoid other ‘exciting’ pitfalls in society.

Play the card game right and that Monaco condo with harbour views may be a possibility. Racing, more than most things, is all about the dream. You brave enough to see it through?

Spanish flies

I asked BSB series boss Stuart Higgs the question: why is it that our kids have to emigrate to Spain to further their careers?

“It’s a stepping stone issue that’s something we’d like to see a manufacturer pick up,” he says. “The future of the two-stroke is clearly limited with Dorna’s announcement that the 125 and 250 classes will be replaced so the last thing we need to do is to create something that will be obsolete or irrelevant. We need to make sure a feeder class is current. We have to keep UK racing fresh and exciting and would consider any sensible proposal.”

Useful contacts

Metrakit people: FAB-Racing

01903 212143, mail@fab-racing.co.uk

Polini people: McIntosh Minimoto

0131 654 0786, www.polini.co.uk

British Minimoto Championship:

01978 350278, kev@mmra.org.uk

Bradley Ray: www.brad-ray.co.uk