Our friends at Ride Rage Radio in Sydney had Troy Bayliss on the line for a chat earlier this week and with their permission we have transcribed the yarn for your enjoyment.
RRR: Troy Bayliss is having a bit of rest after two big weekends of motorcycling racing, and I still find this hard to believe, wrapping up five Australian Championships in two weekends, but more importantly his first Australian Championship! Congratulations, Troy Bayliss, what a fantastic effort, and I still can’t believe you have never wrapped up an Australian Championship before now.
Troy: Hi guys, everything going good, mate?
RRR: Yeah, yeah, not too bad, but not as good as you, five championships in two weekends.
Troy: It did turn out pretty good actually, I guess I’ve been busy away really, and when I came back, I did miss out on… I came quite close to winning some championships early on in my career doing the Shell Oils Series.
RRR: Don’t talk about 1995, I still cry when I think about that one.
Troy: Yeah, so a few ups and downs and I led the championships many times, only to fall off or something to go wrong and end up finishing second or third, but this time around I put my mind to it and put a lot of work and effort into it and went away and had two really good weeks.
RRR: And also probably the important thing is that the first weekend was the Australian Dirt Track Championships at your old hunting ground, the Old Bar Circuit, where you’ve had so much success recently, in the Troy Bayliss Classic, but three classes over one weekend, you must have been pretty busy, but how was it to get back to a circuit that you know so well and wrap up three Australian Championships in front of your old hometown crowd?
Troy: I grew up on that track really, and it sort of lends itself a little bit to a road racer because there’s more grip there than most places, so it did suit me, I mean to win three… I entered in three classes, the 250, the 450 and the Pro Open, it was… to win three I knew I had to be on my toes and like the first of the finals of the 450 and it got restarted twice and the first two times I got the holeshot, the last time I was fifth into the first corner, I thought ‘Oh my god, here we go, déjà-vu again,’ but I managed to pull that off and then the other two came a little bit easier.
RRR: And then the next weekend you’ve got to head up to the Proserpine Circuit in Queensland to race the Australian Supermoto Championship, this time an S2 and S3 Champion, do you have to change your riding style, obviously you’ve just changed the wheels on the motorcycles and ridden the same bikes, Troy, probably a little bit of a suspension tweak as well, but what about your riding style, did you have to change much?
Troy: No, not really, like you said, we didn’t do much, all we did was put a heavier spring on the back and just lengthened the front forks just a little bit. I used nearly the same tyres, I didn’t even use a slick on the back, I used the same tyres as I did at Old Bar, and cut slick on the front and then some rain tyres, as we had a couple of days of rain as well. Up there, being tar, I knew I was going to be fast on the tar anyway, I hadn’t done jumps for quite some time, but I did do a lot of motocross as a junior, so I just had to rely on the memory. Angus Reekie really gave me a hard time in some of the races and through the dirt section on the jumps I had to sort of ride, I guess over what I really wanted to do, to stay with him. In the end it all came together for me, so pretty happy of that weekend as well.
RRR: I read a quote recently from Colin Edwards, he said it’s pretty hard to beat someone that inside his own helmet there’s no way in the world he’s losing the race, it sounds like some of that determination has not only been on show in January this year at the Troy Bayliss classic, but it’s been whipped out of the closet as well over the last couple of weekends.
Troy: It’s been pretty full-on. Now we just clean up the bikes and I go out on Thursday I have to do a practice up at Hatcher’s Junior Flat Track up here at Arundel on the Gold Coast, on Saturday we do a few demo races with me and Gally, and Crumpy, Karl Muggeridge and a few others, and we just go out there to support the kids and try and help the club and that’s about it. After that, I’m packing up for a couple of months and there are a few other things I want to take care of and then I’ll get geed up towards the end of the year and we’ll see what happens.
RRR: Now a couple of things I want to ask you about Troy is the exhibitions that you’ve been putting on recently, they seem to be an outstanding success, what are the chances of them being on next year and hopefully maybe even coming to Sydney?
Troy: So far, the one we did earlier in the year in Brisbane, the Moto Expo, was pretty good, we sort of changed it up a little bit and brought it to life and everyone seemed to enjoy that. Kim has been working hard and so is Mark Peterson as well and I’ve been out doing a few events lately, so I’ve got to get my head down and start thinking about what we’re going to do down there, whether we’ll do some more flat track or what we do down there as well, but it is going good and I think after the first one everybody’s got a lot of confidence in what we’ve put on after the first one, so really it should only get better.
RRR: The other thing, Bracksy told me about today when I was talking to him that not only can you add British Champion, World Superbike Champion, five-times Australian Champion, but also author to your pecking order with a recently published book on riding techniques.
Troy: I hooked up with David Bull from America and I just got my copy only a few days ago, so I’ve had… of course I know what went in there, but when you see the book for the first time and actually have a read of it, I’m really happy with how it came out, so it won’t be long and it will be on stores in Amazon and around the place, so yeah, it’s interesting to do something different, it’s not an autobiography, but it’s quite nice, I really like it.
RRR: Any instruction how you did that ridiculously fast front wheel burnout Troy that we’ve seen all over the Internet?
Troy: That just come about, I don’t know how that all happened.
RRR: It was pretty spectacular, whatever happened.
Troy: Yeah, it’s one of them ones, I mean I find it pretty easy to do, but you’ve got to sort of build yourself up, and work yourself up to it, and get more confident and confident, it’s one of the moves you say, ‘Don’t try it at home.’
RRR: It comes with a disclaimer.
Troy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, a lot of guys that ride on the road could do it with a bit of practice, no problem at all.
RRR: Actually speaking of riding Troy, the Troy Bayliss Experience, are those days still going and can people still have the opportunity to get out there and sample what it’s really like to go around a track pretty fast with a British champion, World Champion, now Australian Champion as well?
Troy: Yeah, we’ve done a few this year and we’ve got some more towards the end of the year, you can check that out on troybaylissexperience.com.au and I do that through Champion Ride Days, they’re the most experienced people at track days across the country, we have a good time doing that, I really get a bit of a kick out of it, it’s really fun to take people on the back and to see the look on their faces and how some people react differently when they hop off, it’s quite funny, so yeah, we’ve got more of that going on.
RRR: I still laugh every time Bracksy reminisces about his lap of Phillip Island with you.
Troy: Yeah, it went pretty quick with Bracksy, he’s not too heavy and we do have a weight limit, I think it’s around 95 kilos fully dressed up in the suit and everything. In the end it all comes down to safety and the heavier you are in the end it just gets slower and slower. I always look at the crowd and see who I’ve got and I’m always looking for someone skinny with long arms and then we go.
RRR: Troy, congratulations on those five Australian Championships, as we said, we still find it hard to believe that after all the success that you’ve had that you still didn’t have an Australian Championship, it’s great to see you come home and have such great success and really looking forward to seeing you back on track again and fingers crossed, everything’s going according to plan, I will be at the Troy Bayliss Classic come January 2015.
Troy: Great, thanks very much guys, and I’m really looking forward to the Classic next year, that’s another thing I’ve got to start working on again, I’ve got so many people getting in contact with me, wanting to take part, so it could only get bigger and better I think.
RRR: Excellent, thanks Troy for joining us and we’ll catch up with you shortly.
Troy: Thanks very much, guys!
RRR: That’s Troy Bayliss, not only three times Superbike World Champion, British Champion, five times Australian Champion and all around top bloke, once again taking time out of his very busy schedule to join us here on Ride Rage.
