PICS: AS DESIGN
OK, before I kick things off I have a bit of a confession to make. Athough I respect sidecars, or 'slideys' as they're known to me and my mates, and being a racer myself, I haven't really been their biggest fan. There's a lot of sidecar stigma in the paddock, mainly born of numerous solo sessions being disrupted by these three-wheeled hooligans. They have a reputation for, how shall we put this, spewing their guts up on the racing line. So this incoming experience was the chance for me to see life from a different perspective, a few inches above the ground and with very little control on matters. Would this be the catalyst to change my attitude towards chairs? Damn straight it would.
To make matters worse, we jumped right in at the deep end, taking up the offer of the current F1 sidecar champions, Ryan Charlwood and Ricky Stevens, who run an unbelievably smart Kawasaki ZX-10R powered outfit under the guise of team Quattro Plant Cool Milk Kawasaki. Our setting for the day would be a shockingly sunny Llandow circuit in Wales, which is a tiny twisty track best suited to a lithe and nimble 250cc two stroke – rather than a bloody monster of a sidecar. But hey-ho, how hard can it be, right? After all, I only had to sit down and relax for a few laps...