INTERVIEW
The most successful sidecar racer of all time explains how he won 10 world championships, took 31 consecutive poles and watched most 500cc GPs from the roof of his truck…
Interview JOHN WESTLAKE Photography STEVE WEBSTER ARCHIVE, JOHN WESTLAKE & BAUER AUTOMOTIVE
In early 2004, Steve Webster spotted a curious anomaly with the sidecar race dates – none of that year’s British championship, European championship, and world championship rounds clashed. It meant that, technically, someone could compete in every one of them. So he did just that – winning all three titles and cementing his place as the most successful sidecar racer of all time.
It was an astonishing feat, and neatly summed up Steve’s combination of talents. Not only was he blisteringly fast – he scored his 31st consecutive world championship pole that season – and daringly ambitious, but his calm, analytical approach away from the track was a huge advantage, in this case allowing him to work out the logistics of competing in three championships simultaneously.
Explaining himself in the surroundings of his local in Easingwold, North Yorkshire, Steve attempts to play down the achievement. “We could only do it because the world championship back then was over one weekend [it was called the Superside World Cup and consisted of three races in one day],” he says. “And the European championship was actually the main one.”
But that was still a logistical nightmare, surely? “Well, yes. One weekend we’d be in Italy, the next at Brands, then in Germany, then back to Thruxton, then Hungary, then Snetterton... luckily, it all fell into place, so we could go to them all. One key thing was we had a bus as a transporter and we put the bike underneath [where the bag storage normally is], so we didn’t have any trouble with customs – they didn’t know it was there. We didn’t get held up anywhere. But the whole attempt was silly really.”
In fact, the effort took so much out of him physically and mentally that it effectively ended his career, but we’ll come to that later. Meanwhile, Steve is making his way through a giant fish and chip dinner and explaining how he arrived at a stage in life where the only challenge left was winning everything, everywhere, all at once.
“My dad raced grasstrack, so Igrew up in sidecar paddocks,” he says. “But I used to love going to Scarborough and watching Sheeney and Mick Grant – I had a Garelli Tiger moped, then a CB175. I didn’t have the money to race solos, so me and my older brother Kevin pooled our resources and bought a sidecar. My dad never encouraged me to race, but once we decided we were going to do it, he was very supportive and got involved. He was obviously just waiting for us to make the decision.”
The wrong decision, as it turned out, in terms of the racing machinery that they chose to buy... “We got a Fiddaman Suzuki, which couldn’t go fast or stop – we ran into the back of a few people. We took turns driving and passengering, but I didn’t miss as many gears as Kev, so I became the driver.”
