Niall Mackenzie blog No.2

It was good to catch up with my old mate Daryl Beattie last weekend in Misano. Daryl was pushing Mick Doohan hard for the 500cc World Championship in 1995 until he high sided and broke his collar bone in Assen mid way through the year. He eventually finished runner up in the series but then some fairly big tumbles from his Lucky Strike Suzuki in 1996 brought his career to a premature end. Always the ultimate Aussie party animal, it was great to see Dazzer is still living life to the max and also enjoying covering Moto GP and F1 for Australian TV.

It wasn’t really planned but I spent most of the weekend in Dr Costa’s Clinica Mobile. My son Taylor should have been racing his KTM in the Red Bull Rookie series but his smashed knuckles (from the previous weekend’s British Championship at Cadwell Park) said no thanks. He only managed one lap of practice then it was Claudia Costa’s state of the art hospital on wheels for the next three days. He has performed miracles on me many times in the past so we’ll find out this weekend at the Croft BSB round if his magic has worked for Taylor Mac. 

To the casual observer it may have looked like I simply ran out of talent when I fell from a ZX10 exiting Hislop’s chicane last week at Oulton Park. Others thought I slid off due to excess cement dust on he track from the bank holiday car race held the day before. The truth was I took my eye off the ball for a second; my left foot slipped off the peg crunching me into first gear and the next thing I knew was my bum was on fire. Going on who the corner is named after, I can’t help thinking he had a snigger from above.