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Written by:
Dennis Noyes
10/09/2007 - 07:00 PM
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HANNspree Ten Kate Honda's James Toseland (Photo: Honda Pro Images) ยป More Photos
Only hours after clinching his second World Superbike Championship, James Toseland sat down with a small group of international journalists in the HANNspree Ten Kate office while the party was getting underway outside.
Toseland admitted that after his double win at Brands Hatch on August 4th he really thought it was going to be easy -- a lot easier than his first World Superbike title, clinched at the last race of 2004 at Magny-Cours when he had to overcome a five-point deficit and beat his own factory Ducati teammate, Regis Laconi, who had the home track advantage in France.
But after winning eight races and standing on the podium thirteen times after his first nineteen starts -- pulling out a huge 66-point lead over Max Biaggi -- Toseland went into a late-season slump. Was it because he felt he had it in the bag? Was it because he had made up his mind to turn down an offer from Honda Europe, Ten Kate, and HANNspree to sign on for another year in World Superbike?
James himself doesn't deny that there may have been a letdown in intensity after acquiring such a commanding lead and assuring his MotoGP future, but there were other factors.
Over the final six races of the season Toseland bled points. He had averaged 18.6 points a race over the first 19, but only 10.2 over the final half dozen. In fact Toseland was a distant fifth in points production in September and October, trailing Haga (124 points), Bayliss (114 points), Biaggi (111 points), and Corser (69 points). Toseland managed only 61 points
"If it had been easy I probably wouldn't have appreciated just how much the title means to me and to Ten Kate," Toseland said late on Sunday evening. "Of course you can look back and see that we had problems at different points over the season and that we had more good luck than bad luck. The low point for us was at Misano where we realized that our HRC traction control was not good enough. We came back and won the next time out in Brno."
Here, subject by subject, are Toseland's remarks:
On whether he would have been a musician if he had not been a motorcycle racer:
I trained for classical piano and I also sang and wrote songs, but I would have not have been satisfied to have been a musician. I was a very angry and frustrated young boy at 13 when I experienced a tragedy that left me very angry inside. I faced a situation in which I was either going to be wild and angry or I was going to dedicate myself to something. My mother loaned me 15,000 pounds for my first racing season and I have never looked back. When I signed my MotoGP contract my mother sent me a text message that said, "I never dreamed that 15,000 pounds would take you to MotoGP. It has always been your dream."
(When James was 13 his mother's companion, a man who treated James like a son, committed suicide only a short time after he had given James his first off-road motorcycle.)
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