17 minute read
Flat track
In the niche world of fat-track racing, the Hooligan class is flthy, fast and ferocious, open only to those willing to wrestle a roaring 180kg motorcycle built for road racing around dirt-track corners at high speeds. And – despite no experience, funds or backing – two rank outsiders have made it their mission to win the championship
Going hard: there’s no front brake in Hooligan; riders rely on their left leg and a boot clad in a steel shoe for protection
The misfits
Rebel racer: Charlie Stockwell, owner of Stockwell Racing. Opposite: (left) a retro fuel tank; (right) ‘Leftie’, one of Stockwell’s racing friends, in action
On the dirt oval of the Adrian Flux Arena in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, a motorcycle rider dressed in the pristine kit of Stockwell Racing, standing astride a custom HarleyDavidson that’s been crafted with his own hands and ingenuity, is about to find out if he and his machine have what it takes. All around him, thudding V-twin motors of 750cc or more are cracked open to bellow their approval of the race ahead. Reverberations echo deep and low, in the gut. The rider glances down at the fuel tank below his chest and along his bike’s forks to register unconsciously that this is a machine with no front brake to help contain the power he commands at his right hand.
He’s onstage in a scene typical of any motorsport theatre: it’s raw, it’s loud, and the tang of danger sours the throat. But the air carries a particular scent: the earthy notes of flat-track motorcycle racing. Charlie Stockwell, who by day plies his trade as one of the world’s most acclaimed customisers of HarleyDavidson bikes, is about to start his first race in flat track’s ‘Hooligan’ class, on a machine he finished building only the night before. A dirt track in King’s Lynn suddenly seems a long way from his gleaming showroom on London’s King’s Road. Clad in shiny lid and leathers, on a bike more artfully conceived than anything his rivals can offer, Stockwell has gatecrashed a savage outpost of the already down ’n’ dirty flat-track world. Now he must deliver, or fail very publicly, for the norms of the Hooligan clan dictate that performance is prized over presentation; grit over glam. A slick newcomer wanting to do things their own way is to be regarded with suspicion.
“When Charlie turned up,” says Ross Sharp, flat- track racer and former editor of The Bike Shed, “I thought, ‘There’s Charlie from Warr’s,’ and that it was a Harley-backed factory effort, with his custom Alpinestars leathers and his fancy bike. Then we realised it was just a 20-year-old Sportster he’d put a lot of effort into. That appealed to my take on the
Doing the honours: Italian riders Sami Panseri and Nico Sorbo wait for their podium places at the end of the day
Roaring ahead: Sami Panseri competes in the Thunderbike category
Dust devils: a Thunderbike heat involving Mitch van der Stelt (133) Sami Panseri (85) and Michelle Kroneisl (88)
Hooligan racing ethos; he brought a ‘garagista’ spirit to an increasingly professional grid.” But as Stockwell is about to find out, Hooligan racing is ferocious.
In a race of under five minutes, he’s almost lapped. “I was rubbish,” Stockwell confesses. “I jumped in at the deep end – and what a nightmare! After five laps I had severe arm pump, I could hardly breathe, and I was totally worn out. The corners come so bloody quickly it’s terrifying and energy-sapping at the same time. It’s basically horrible.”
Born on the dirt ovals of the USA in the 1920s, flat track remains true to its roots as one of the most raw, stark and urgent branches of motorsport on the planet. No million-dollar motorhomes and thousand-army race teams; this is man-and-van territory, where shelter is taken under E-Z UP awnings and catering is straight off the barbie. Anything fancier would sit ill in a branch of bike racing that glories in its stripped-back authenticity.
While flat track remains apple-pie American and a major draw to spectators across the land, a growing European scene offers ambitious bike racers the chance to enjoy its hardcore thrills without massive cost. Nowhere is this truer than in the Hooligan class, conceived to allow stripped-down, big-engined road bikes to race, with minimal essential modification.
Riding high: three-time European champion Gary Birtwistle is a big name on the Hooligan scene
“It started in the States when a few guys had some beers and decided to take their standard Harley Softail street bikes onto the track between races to entertain the crowds,” says Sharp. “Despite the mudguards and saddle bags, they were having more fun doing that than normal flat-track racing. The idea was that you could basically pull an old bike out of your shed and race it without any major modifications, so it’s founded on a very amateur spirit. Over the past few years, it has really taken off.”
This is no arena for the anorexic Speedway rockets that have skittered sideways around European ovals for a century. The regulations of the DTRA – Dirt Track Riders Association – demand: “Heavy, bigcapacity road-bike bruisers on tight dirt tracks. The rules are minimal and allow racers to create goodlooking and purposeful customs that are more suitable for racing.” Key provisions are that the bikes are post-1980 models, have engines of at least 750cc, and are modified from a single production machine.
As a consequence, Hooligan racing demands rare physicality, as riders must wrestle with a bike that can weigh more than 180kg and rarely travels in a straight line, while being powered round corners in an extended slide. From start to finish of each brutally intense race, bike and rider skirt disaster, with only a left leg and a boot clad in a steel shoe acting as props against oblivion. “They’re awful things to battle around the track,” says Stockwell. “And if you fall off and get run over by one, they’re heavy bikes to get run over by. They shouldn’t be out there – they’re built for roads, then we take off the front brake and smash them around a track with no grip. It’s everything you shouldn’t do. But that’s where the entertainment is. That’s what creates the buzz. That’s why they call us hooligans. And it’s probably why there are only 10 of us on the grid. But I love it.”
Those who master Hooligan racing are strong and extremely skilled – riders such as 31-year-old Gary Birtwistle, a three-time European champion who has dominated the DTRA series since 2018. A longtime fan of flat track, and from a family of bike racers, Birtwistle is the recognised master of “treading the fine line between order and chaos” that characterises the series. “I think that’s what I enjoy about it,” he says. “It’s loose beneath you, and you’re making the bike do things it doesn’t want to. You’re pushing it just enough until it bites back, and you’re doing that all the time. You know that you’re making the bike do things it’s not happy about, and eventually it will catch you out, but you try to anticipate it.” The keys to speed are balance and throttle control – familiar tropes in motorsport, but accentuated in Hooligan racing, given the bikes’ unwieldy nature.
As Stockwell came to realise during his first racing exploits, its unique riding demands would force him to relinquish the hot seat to a keener talent – someone capable of making the most of the machine he knew he could build.
Young gun: Stockwell Racing’s 28-year-old star Jake Young gets prepped to ride
Though he couldn’t have realised it at the time, Stockwell’s Harley odyssey began during boyhood while regularly passing the landmark Warr’s Harley-Davidson dealership on King’s Road. En route to watch Chelsea FC with his dad, or on shopping trips to Oxford Street, he’d gaze through the shopfront at the otherworldly-looking bikes beyond the glass, not imagining that one day this store and its machines would dominate his life.
Come his late teens, he landed a Saturday job at the showroom, via a brother-in-law who worked there, and his role evolved into a full apprenticeship after he quit art school. “I was there cleaning the bikes, sweeping floors and making coffees, and I got hooked,” says Stockwell, now 41. “I fell in love with bikes. So I asked them to employ me full-time, and I learned my trade.”
Transferring his artistic skills to the metal beasts that surrounded him, Stockwell rapidly matured into a Harley customiser of world renown; at 19, he convinced his manager that he should be allowed to work on a bike to fulfil a client’s commission. Having satisfied one customer, “it went from there. One customer grew to two the next year and it snowballed. Five years in, I started to get an order book up, and it’s been my full-time role ever since”.
Over the past two decades, Stockwell’s reputation has led to commissions from royalty – both the Hollywood kind (Orlando Bloom) and real monarchs (the King of Jordan). But while his artistic bent is
Up to speed: riders go full throttle in the Hooligan race
Kicking back: racers and spectators relax with beers as they wait for the podium results
richly satisfied by his custom works, Stockwell’s creative passion lives alongside another: his need for speed, which has found an outlet through numerous strains of bike racing over two decades. “I needed the adrenalin rush on both sides,” he admits. “The creative and the riding.”
Those twin impulses were destined to fuse once Stockwell discovered Harley-Davidson’s deep involvement in US flat-track racing. It wouldn’t be long before he was lured by the sport’s gritty charms into forming his own race team, running his own handcrafted bikes. Driven partly by his brand fixation, but also by a deep-seated desire to take on the establishment in a niche racing scene, Stockwell hit upon the idea of converting his very own 1999 Harley Sportster into a Hooligan front-runner.
Ill-starred though Stockwell’s quest seemed, he found it easy to rationalise: “I build bikes for people that predominantly have to look amazing, so in a way it was more exciting for me to build something that had to be technically good, not just look good. And also something that shouldn’t really compete. I knew I could build a faster bike than these modern ones. So there was a little bit of my cockiness and love of a challenge involved in that.”
Every aspect of the Sportster’s engine and chassis was scrutinised in preparation for its debut: cylinder heads and pistons stripped and refreshed; gear ratios perfected; sprocket sizes calculated; exhausts custom-welded; suspension geometry tweaked… All this in pursuit of a fast bike with great traction, a fat torque curve and an ability to turn left four times a lap, while nudging 160kph on the short straights with only the single permitted brake, at the rear, to slow it down. A handful, in other words. “Throttle control is massive,” confirms Birtwistle, “especially in that moment when you’ve chopped off the throttle and you’re throwing the bike in and it’s pitched sideways and it’s coming in, in, in [to the corner]… and you’re trying to get it stopped by sort of digging the tyres in and turning the front wheel. A snapshot looks like an accident. I think I like that.”
Not for nothing do elite MotoGP riders such as Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez use flat track to stay sharp. “The skill set sits between motocross and road-bike racing,” Birtwistle adds. “That’s why the top guys enjoy it. It benefits their racing.”
For a rider of Stockwell’s road-racing and custom-building background, the challenge of getting up to full Hooligan speed was considerable. Turning up to be almost lapped had never been part of the plan. But on a bright, dry October day in Parchim, northern Germany, Stockwell is armed with his trusty machine once again, and a new plan. He’s joined by flat-track riders from Italy, Holland, Sweden and beyond, who have made their way to the town’s oval track for a day of racing. And with him is his good friend Jake Young.
In his pursuit of success, to prove the Stockwell brand has ‘go’ to match the ‘show’, he’s phoned the emerging enduro star, whose fast-and-loose riding skills marked him out as a name to watch on the UK off-road racing scene. Sharp endorses Young as being “so natural and quick on the bike”. Stockwell and Young had become acquainted through bike racing in 2018 and truly bonded during a 2019 spell together in Australia, where Young, 28, was working as a model and Stockwell with custom-bike clients. Over “too many beers” at a friend’s house in Sydney, the idea of Young becoming lead rider for what would become Stockwell Racing took hold, with Stockwell stepping out of the saddle to become bike creator, engineer, chief mechanic and mentor.
Young, who’d been racing trials bikes since the age of eight, describes the chance of racing flat track with someone who’d rapidly developed into a “best bud” as “the best ticket I could possibly have had”. “I’d wanted to race flat track for years, because I loved going sideways on bikes and riding with a big motor,” he says. “It’s what makes flat track such a gnarly sport. But I hadn’t ever worked out how to do it. I’m no bike builder, and flat-track bikes aren’t something you can just buy. And now here’s my mate working out a plan for us to do it together.”
Their madcap, next-to-zero budget scheme gathered pace, and by early May 2019 Young was in Stockwell Racing attire for his first test on a bike newly hand-built by Stockwell, right after returning from Australia. Then, on May 5, just one day after that test ride, Young suffered an accident that shattered his left shin and forced him to temporarily quit racing. The damage was severe: eight ‘zigzag’ fractures requiring 25 screws and extended R&R.
Dog tired: flat-track racers and partners Steph Bolam and Gary Birtwistle take a break with a furry friend between races
As he recovered, Team Stockwell were forced to put the year’s plans on hold and look instead to a 2020 programme of British and European racing. “Then COVID struck,” Young laments – though, as both and he and Stockwell recount, the enforced break from racing bought them time: for Young to heal, for Stockwell to plan further bike modifications, and for both to gel as a professional partnership.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to win a race,” says Stockwell. “But I was sure that, as Jake is such a wild rider, I could train him from what I’d learnt. I thought that with my belief and J’s raw talent we could win the championship. I realised this would be a steep learning curve, but that encouraged me to learn everything about how to do it, how to build the bike, how to make it better, then how to communicate with Jake so when he got off the bike he could tell me how it felt and I could correct it technically. I had to [instil] faith that I do know what I’m talking about, even though I couldn’t show him on track. We probably spent more time talking then we did on the bike.”
After managing just one UK race in 2020, this competition in Parchim is a rare chance in a sea of event cancellations for Stockwell Racing to show what they’re made of. Predictably, given the againstall-odds nature of Stockwell Racing’s escapades to date, the run-up to the German trip hasn’t gone to plan. Money is so tight that Stockwell has deemed “fresh tyres more important than food,” while the plane tickets have been bought by his girlfriend.
On race-day morning, Stockwell and Young are readying the bikes at their spot among packed vans, tents, tarps and fold-out chairs. Alongside them are familiar faces from the UK, including Birtwistle and his partner Stephanie Bolam – who he met through riding, and who races flat track on a vintage Bultaco – all preparing for the day’s action. But Young’s mojo has vanished after being unable to find his groove during warm-ups on a track longer – and therefore faster – than anything he’s used to. He’s slow.
Stockwell applies some none-too-subtle psychology to switch Young back on: “[Jake] was awful,” he says, “so I just stood around watching his technique, took him to the side and explained to him, ‘Look, you’re too timid going into the corners. You’ve got to go harder, faster, get the bike sideways and you’ll get around that corner with a lot more speed.’ To tell someone on the border of crashing they’ve got to go into corners harder, faster and more aggressive… he looked at me like, ‘Are you taking the piss?’ But he gave it a go.” Young has his own take: “Charlie told me to settle for fourth, when all we’d discussed beforehand was how we were going for the win. And I was so pissed off with him for even considering it!”
The tactic works: following a dust-inducing performance, Young comes in second. Only Hooligan supremo Birtwistle finishes ahead of this most unlikely racing duo – by just 0.3 seconds – a result that has Stockwell shedding tears of joy and relief as Young crosses the line. “To go from last to knocking on the door of first place was pretty special,” says Young. “It shows the level of trust we’ve been able to build up in each other’s very different talents.”
The result also confirmed the credibility of Stockwell Racing to a sceptical fraternity not given to welcoming outsiders. And once you’re in, the flattrack community is tight-knit. Says Bolam of her own experience, “When I started, nobody was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re a girl. I think it was initially quite a humiliating experience for Charlie when he started racing, but when you look at his competition… those boys are rapid! It’s such a great sport to get involved in. The whole scene is really like a family.”
While the bold entry of Stockwell Racing onto the scene caused a few heads to turn back in 2018, Young and Stockwell are now firmly ensconced, having carved their own distinct niche. “There’s no doubt we are the misfits. We’re still learning flat track,” says Stockwell on the shift in attitude since he started racing Hooligans. “But we’ve come from nowhere to being the team to watch. There was a bit of piss-taking. And then it was, ‘Actually, these guys are pretty serious.’ But we try to be a bit more of the rebellious side of the paddock: go in, race hard, do well, and have fun at the same time.”
Pandemic permitting, that podium finish will serve as the platform to launch Stockwell Racing on to greater things during 2021, with a mix of British and European racing planned through to October. Unsurprisingly, Stockwell’s ‘garagista’ spirit is stronger than ever: “The goal is to rock up with 20-year-old bikes that we’ve built ourselves and crush the opposition,” he laughs. “We don’t really know what we’re doing; we’ve never done it before. But we’re going to win.” Instagram: @StockwellRacing; @gary_birtwistle; @rosscosharp; @stephbolam
