King Billy
Published: 18th October 2007
Author: Billy MacKenzie
Mac lifts the British MX1 title, gets caught up in a food fight and then represents his country at the Motocross des Nations – all in a week’s work for a professional racer
I said it was over last time but this time it really is! The main focus has been on the world championship all year so when it finished it kinda felt like there was nothing left to think about - in a way it took the pressure off for the final few races although the last two were the most important for me.
Leading up to the British championship I was s****ing myself - I was thinking about it way too much, partly because I’ve been in that situation before and last time it went tits up so the week leading up I done everything I could to make sure I didn’t miss a heartbeat. I even had things that were trying to stop me from getting my work done, like when my old faithful practice bike (Scarlet) slipped the gear shaft off the selector. So I called Stevie G at
Luckily the guy from LPE has a small supercross track nearby - it wasn't even a minute-a-lap but it was a cool little track and I pounded out two 35-minute motos even if I was a little dizzy by the end. Hendo was there the whole time telling me my times and stuff so Hendo, I'm truly grateful mate!
After all the preparation that week I arrived at the race a little nervous but I told myself there was no way I was gonna lose this championship again! I arrived at the track and was immediately taken away with Dougan. We drove down to the nearest town for some food but the only place that took our fancy was a chippy! So there we both were, sat in the chippy knocking back some sausage, chips and beans with plenty of brown sauce! Hey it musta worked though, check out our results the next day. Chippy is the new race diet – I’ve told you all before!Qualifying was going bad. I was trying too much and kept making mistakes, then the track was quite busy as there were a lot of riders and I had to abort a couple of laps but the mood I was in I wasn’t gonna accept anything other than pole. I hit the last lap perfect and went a second-and-a-half ahead of Ken which is pretty damn good cos big Kenneth can hang a lap out! I then pulled the best two starts in my life, even watching back on the video there wasn’t one thing I done wrong. I got out front and put in some hard laps to get the gap. I had it sitting comfortably at about eight seconds but then I made a big mistake before the whoops and hacked my way through them like a right helmet!
By the time I got to the next corner I looked over and Ken was there, only about three seconds behind. I got nervous and pumped up, I held him off for a while but I heard him come down the inside so I let him past - I knew if I finished behind him it was good enough but as I let him past he started riding about four seconds a lap slower. I thought ‘just stay behind him till a lap to go and go at it with him’ but we were going so slow that Tanel caught us up at rapid pace, passed us both and went on for the win. Tanel done me a huge favour and Ken only got two points on me instead of three.
The second race was like clockwork for
Party time! The race was on Saturday so everyone stayed over for a party and it was brilliant! The beer tent was open, the mechanical sheep was in full flow and everyone was celebrating with a touch of alcohol! We had a good crew that night which consisted of me, Bry, Stevie, Brad and Hayley, Dougan, Deano, Chris Black and Ricky Lockhart and a load more! It started off in the Motovision awning where the boys hooked everyone up with some proper good grub, drinks and music and then from there we all moved to the beer tent where Tommy's aunty Julie was buying me drinks - thanks Julie! Me and Brad were drinking partners which wasn't very sensible on my part - we all know how wild Brad is and I ended up dancing my ass off with some woman’s sunglasses on in the dark beer tent!
When we were all pretty done-in and hungry we went back to big Al’s camper for the leftovers of his BBQ. We were all chowing down on some sausages when a potato hit me in the head - it was Mike Foster who was the culprit. I threw a sausage back at him and with that Al got up and shouted at the top of his voice FOOD FIGHT! It was like something off a cartoon, food was going everywhere! We emptied sauce bottles, juice bottles, the lot - it was awesome!From there it was on the plane and over to the Nations. Not that exciting to be honest - we were on our best behaviour. However, we did add some excitement to the press conference! We arrived there at 3pm but had to wait three hours before we got to the mics - we were all pretty grumpy and hungry leading up to it so we set ourselves the task of slipping a random word into our answers to the questions we got asked! My word was ‘gerbil’, Tommy's was ‘merkin’ (look it up!), James’ was ‘bell’ and Mark’s was ‘helmet’! Easty used it like this 'yeah the boys are up for it, they are just gonna go out there and give it some helmet!' We barely got through the interviews but to be honest I think it cheered everyone up in the room - we were the only team laughing and joking, everyone else just looked tired and pissed off they had to be there because the only people the media were interested in were the Americans!
The weekend didn't go to plan for us. James injured himself in practice and I had trouble setting my bike up for the track - I pumped up really bad in the first race and crashed at the start of the second but Tommy done really well for us! Overall we ended up fifth thanks to James completing a certain amount of laps. I was impressed with