Bradley Smith goes wild

“Hey, Brad: why not take a break from the 210mph rat race and  come spend a night in the Scottish Highlands?” “OK then.”

 

otoGP racers; they’re all pampered, spoilt fashion models, jet setting from one luxury location to another, with a team of mechanics and personal assistants who make sure that they never get their hands dirty any more. Right?

It’s a good theory, especially as the racers themselves become more and more distanced from the heroes of old who spannered their own bikes, slept in a Transit van in a mucky field, and said what they liked without the filter of a PR rottweiler.

But is it true? We reckoned we had a good way to find out: invite Tech 3 Yamaha’s Bradley Smith to a lonely Scottish Moor in the Highlands for a night under canvas, and closely observe his behaviour.

Bradley has suffered in recent years with the ‘pampered stereotype’ tag – unfairly, we feel. Spend any time at all with the 24 year-old it’s hard to see why he isn’t wildly popular. Under the boy-next-door charm and good nature lies a wicked wit – and a sense of adventure. All the same, we fully expected him to be too busy.

To our amazement, he wasn’t.

“I’ve been asked to do a lot of things this year but when I was offered this trip I thought, ‘That’s a bit weird but it actually sounds really cool.’ Mind you, I’m pretty sure it was an office bet, with money on the line. I’d say that you guys said, ‘We’ll get a MotoGP rider to go camping,’ and everyone else was saying you wouldn’t. For some reason I’ve said yes. So I hope you won your bet.”

And so we headed off – MotoGP reporter Steve English, BSB reporter Simon Patterson and Bradley – to one of the wildest parts of the UK: Western Scotland’s Rannoch Moor.

We were armed with nothing more than tents, sleeping bags and a Garmin satnav (oh, and a Range Rover Sport, just in case). It might not sound like the ideal preparation for the back-to-back flyaway rounds at Motegi, Phillip Island and Sepang… but it turned out to be just the break from a frantic life that Bradley seems to need every once in a while.

“It’s nice to immerse yourself in a completely different environment, to disconnect from everything and the crazy world of MotoGP for 24 hours,” he’d said as he drove to our drop-off point. “You rarely get the chance to stop and switch off in your life these days. I’m always running from one thing to the next.”

We arrived around midday, emptied the car and saddled up with a brand new tent apiece, plus ground mats, fuel and rations – enough for a reasonably comfortable night in the open. The autumn sun was warm and bright. The ground underfoot was not too rough. And within an hour we were completely alone in the landscape.

“Just being self sufficient, if only for a day, makes you realise what you can do with quite little,” said Bradley as we hiked up a gentle hill. “We all live a busy life with lots of resources. It’s quite interesting to have all that taken away. I imagined a day without a mobile would cause me stress and hassle but it’s actually quite enjoyable.”

We pitched camp near a tumbledown bothy, with a lake a few tens of yards away. We pitched our tents, then turned our minds towards a camp fire, and dinner – even if it was just Tesco chicken and potatoes cooked over a fire made with logs from a garage, and started with flammable gel.

“I think that was the first time I’ve set up a tent without my family at a motocross race,” reckoned Bradley. “It was definitely the first time I’ve set up a tent without using the instructions.”

He and Steve shared the cooking, and once we’d filled our bellies we sat back contentedly on in the long grass, letting the situation soak in. “It’s nice to just relax and take in the sights here for tonight,” Bradley murmured as he chucked on another log. “Looking at the moon rising and lighting the valley is the sort of really cool thing we don’t get time to appreciate.”

It’s been a good year for Bradley – probably his best yet. Not only has he blitzed his team mate and fellow Brits Cal Crutchlow and Scott Redding; he’s also held off factory rider Andrea Dovizioso to split the factory Ducatis for sixth overall, only seven points off Iannone in fifth.

“I thought going into this season that being the top satellite bike would be hard. It meant being in front of Pol, Cal, Scott – all big names, guys who have fought for world championships.

“I think the most important thing from the year is that I’ve answered my critics inside and outside the paddock. Those critics inside the paddock are the guys who will decide if I get a factory contract in June or July next year. They’re the guys I need to impress, and they’ve not been interested in the past. And, let’s be honest, not proving them wrong is the reason I’m not a factory rider yet.”

All the same, you might think Bradley lives an easy life of first-class flights and five-star hotels. The reality is long weeks away from family and friends, mandatory drug tests at any hour of the night or day, and the constant pressure of fighting for his spot on the grid. He was only signed back to the French Tech 3 team late this year, despite outclassing team mate Pol Espargaro all season long.

“I think a lot of people have a misconception of the lifestyle. You need to be quite robust, but you also need to be open-minded to deal with certain circumstances. I think a few riders get lost because of how they’re treated – but that’s one thing about Hervé [Poncharal, team owner]: he doesn’t treat us like princesses.”

It’s getting chilly – this is October in Scotland – so we decide on an early night. And by sunrise we’re all up again. How did you sleep, Bradley?

“Well, for 90 percent of the time the tent was perfect. The other 10 percent was when I was trying to sleep. I’d pulled it too taut and that meant the groundsheet kept trying to lift off the ground, so I was freezing during the night.”

We cook sausage and beans for breakfast, clear the fire area, and pack up camp for the return trip. Bradley is still enjoying the scenery – but his gruelling training regime means he’s also itching to return to civilisation.

“I’m glad that we’re only doing a day out here. I think after two days I’d need to be out on my bicycle or hitting the gym. It was lucky we did the hike yesterday with heavy bags, otherwise I’d have been running up and down the mountains a few times to burn off some energy.”

As we get back to the car, Bradley takes stock. “I don’t think that anyone will believe I actually did the trip. They’ll think it was some sort of TV-style night in a hotel after putting up my tent. But it was actually really good fun.”

Pictures Steve English, Simon Patterson, 2 Snap