“The fiercest rider on
track was Noriyuki Haga”
sport
Where are they now? Troy Corser – two-time WorldSBK champ turned instructor and historic racerClose call at Brands Hatch in
2005 as Corser and fi erce rival
Nori Haga touch at full noiseTWICE WORLD SUPERBIKE
champion Troy Corser lives
in England with wife Sam
and their teenage children.
But work still takes the
46-year-old around Europe,
instructing at race academies
for a Dutch company and its
partner, BMW.
As a racer, Corser collected
a set of Australian, American
and World Superbike titles. In
a WSBK career that spanned
1995 to 2011, he rode factory
machines for Ducati, Aprilia,
Petronas, Suzuki, Yamaha
and BMW, recording 33 wins,
43 pole positions and 45
fastest laps while snaring the
1996 and 2005 crowns.
“Sixteen three-day events
per year keep me busy,” he
says. “Our son is 15, taller
than me, and into soccer,
while our daughter is 13 and
into gymnastics and dance,
but they both enjoy bikes.”
He says Wayne Gardner
was the biggest inf luence on
his career.
“Coming from Wollongong,
I watched Wayne go overseas
and do the Grands Prix,
and he was one of my first
sponsors.”
More influential than
your father, Steve?
Yes, because I didn’t see Dad
as a racer. He took me to the
race track so I could ride,
and fixed the bikes when we
crashed them, but he never
tried to tell me how to ride.
Mum (Carol) and Dad were
trials riders, which is where
we sort of started, and they
let me do the riding. Dad was
happy to step back and not be
in the front line.What were the biggest
differences for you
between your two titles,
which were separated by
nine years?
In 1996 we had no electronics
for assistance, only telemetry.
Back then it was just full
power.
When I won the second
one, we had traction control,
although I never used it
much. I would turn it off at
times, because I still liked to
have the feel of the throttle
in my hand. But that didn’t
always work for the life of
the tyre, even though I was
happier feeling the bike.What was your favourite
race engine?
The Aprilia V-twin. The
chassis was a little bit big,
but the motor was fantastic
and I loved that bike. And
the Ducati I loved, of course.Those two probably stood out
the most.Do you think the WSBK
bikes today are too
restricted?
The bikes were always
supposed to be based around
a production model. That
was the whole beginning of
superbike, modified bikes.
They went a long way away
from that back in the day,
and now they’ve come back
to almost where it started. It’s
good because you can feel the
grip and people can afford
to race them. We don’t need
one manufacturer having a
bike that blasts ever ybody, so
where the bikes are right now
is fine.In qualifying, you could
put down the vital
lap without getting
flustered.
I don’t get nervous. I stopped
getting nervous after I won
the American championship.
W hen I raced here, I still
had nerves and won, and
when I went to America I had
a little bit of nerves at the
beginning. Then I won there
and after that it was okay.
My thought was: ‘Let’s just
go to the track and do what
we’re there to do.’Was America a bigger
step than going to
WorldSBK?
Yes, because it was my
first time out of Australia.
Travelling around America is
almost like travelling around
Europe with the distances
between each race. I travelled
with Nigel Taylor, a racer from
here, so I had someone to talk
with. It was a huge step to leave
Australia as a kid. Once I’d
done that, going to Europe was
not such a big step.Who did you see as your
biggest rivals?
Carl Fogarty was a multiple
world champion, so he was
the biggest threat, but once
we got on the track he was no
more or less of a threat than
anybody else. But probably
the fiercest rider on the track
was Nori Haga, to be honest.
Max (Biaggi) and I never
raced against each other a
lot, maybe a few times one
season, but with Haga it was
years and years as teammates
and with me jumping
between manufacturers.
Obviously Frankie (Chili) was
the other rider to beat when
he was on the Ducati.
So Foggy, Haga and Frankie
were the three who stood out
in my career. DON COX