Ephedrine, aspirin and caffeine: Guy Martin on the fuel behind his early racing career
Few road racers balance full-time work, motorcycle racing, and TV stardom like Guy Martin has. But the former TT racer admits that staying awake to earn his racing budget involved more than just long hours — it involved stimulants.
Before he became a household name, Guy Martin was a truck mechanic with a dream of racing at the top of the Isle of Man TT. But TT racing isn’t cheap, and Martin admits the path to funding his passion was relentless.
“The more I raced, the more expensive it was, so the more I had to work,” Martin told the Big Issue. “So I was working three nights a week down the docks after my day job. And I used to take ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin just to be able to work enough to earn more money to go racing motorbikes. That’s how it was.”
Ephedrine is a stimulant that affects the central nervous system. While legal in prescribed doses for conditions like low blood pressure, exceeding limits, and selling or supplying it without a prescription, is illegal. For Martin, it wasn’t about chasing an artificial buzz, it was a solution to a punishing work schedule.
The truck mechanic turned TV star also revealed how it was his parents’ work ethic that drove him to such lengths. “My mum and my dad just worked all the time,” he said, speaking to Adrian Lobb. “We didn’t see a lot of my dad, because he was always at work. My mum trained to be a nurse when I went to secondary school, but before then, she used to work in the fields … We all used to go straight from school into the fields and give her a hand. If you want owt, you work for it.”
Martin’s confession underscores a part of his career often overshadowed by racing triumphs and television appearances. The sheer determination and stamina required to fund his own racing were all-encompassing. Even as he tinkered with engines and chased speed, the late nights, long days, and stimulant-fuelled shifts were the engine driving him toward the Mountain Course.
In the same interview, Martin admits that the thrill of racing itself wasn’t the ultimate draw. Instead, the fascination lay in mechanics: rebuilding, tweaking, and understanding machinery. From his early days fiddling with a self-modified Kawasaki AR50, to TV projects rebuilding canal boats, Spitfires, and even a replica WWI tank, the adrenaline wasn’t from racing, but from the work itself.
Yet without the long hours funded by stimulants, that path might never have been possible. Martin’s story is a reminder that behind every TT start, there is a side of the story that is often never seen or heard by the general public.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
