Early years to doing 'The Double'

The Simmo Story Part 1: 1986-1994

Words: Stuart Barker

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Dalbeattie, a small, sleepy town in Galloway, south-west Scotland, is better known for producing granite than top level sportsmen. But just outside it lives one of the most underrated British riders of the last few decades.

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Ian Simpson isn’t big on self-promotion, and never has been. He lives a quite life riding trials and enduro bikes in the Galloway Hills, and also runs a motorcycle touring company, guiding clients around some of the best, and least-known, roads in Scotland. To all intents and purposes, he appears to be nothing more than a mad keen biker, just like the rest of us.

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It’s the silverware around the house that give away his true identity. Three TT trophies and five separate cups marking each of his British Championship titles, stand sentinel throughout the house, proud reminders of just how fast ‘Simmo’ was as a road racer in the 1990s.

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He raced against, and regularly beat, the likes of Carl Fogarty, Joey Dunlop, and Steve Hislop but, because he lives so remotely and doesn’t make a song and dance about his achievements, Simmo’s achievements have tended to go under the radar.

Perhaps it wasn’t a great surprise that he started riding bikes very young. Father Bill was himself a top-level racer who won five Scottish championships and took a joint TT win with Chas Mortimer in the punishing ten-lap Production TT of 1976. He also took a second place in the 1985 Production Class C TT riding a Kawasaki GPz900.

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Bill Simpson was no slouch on a motorbike, but he also happened to own the local bike shop in nearby Dumfries and is a gifted engineer to boot. A bike-mad boy could have had no better mentor: every which way the young Ian Simpson looked, there were bikes. ‘I went to all the racetracks with my dad when I was a kid’ he says. ‘Even at school, when the teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grew up’ I'd always say, “I want to be a motorbike racer.” That didn't go down too well!’

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While he was more than encouraged to ride bikes as a youngster, Bill Simpson – like many racing dads – knew the dangers of the sport all too well and wasn’t keen that his son should follow in his tyre tracks. ‘My dad didn't want me to race but he was happy enough for me to ride bikes’ Ian says. ‘I had a Kawasaki KM90 as a field bike when I was about eight. Then when I was sixteen I got a Fizzy (Yamaha FS1E) as my first road bike, and that was the last road bike I had for decades because, as soon as I started racing on a Yamaha 250LC that same year, I wasn't interested in riding on the road.’

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Somewhat ironically, father and son’s positions were reversed in 2018 and Ian found himself being the one fearing for his father’s life when Bill - 70 at the time - suffered horrendous injuries while racing a classic bike at East Fortune. ‘That’s the last time I was really scared’ Simmo admits. ‘My dad almost lost his life. He broke his back, all his ribs, punctured his lungs – he was in a coma in intensive care for a month. The doctors said it would take a miracle for him to live, but he's a hardy old bugger and he's doing alright now.’

       

Despite Bill’s concerns about his son taking up racing, Simmo went ahead anyway. ‘He said “You’ll just hurt yourself and spend a lot of money”, but he didn’t actually try to stop me, so I went racing anyway in 1986.’ 

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Turning up at East Fortune with a Yamaha RD250LC, a sixteen-year-old Simpson finished 12th out of 40 starters in a Scottish 250cc Production race. The man doing all the winning in the class at the time was a certain Jim Moodie. The two would become lifelong best pals and would even ride shotgun for each other in some later races.

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In 1987, his first full season of racing, Simmo won the Scottish 250cc Production Championship. That same year he made his debut on the roads, finishing second in the Manx Grand Prix Newcomers’ Lightweight race. ‘I had always wanted to do the TT and, back then, most people did the Manx before they tried the TT’ Simmo says of his longer-term plan. ‘I had watched the TT all my life, and I just loved it as an event, even though I never thought I’d get to race in it.’  He would not only race in it one day, he would win it multiple times.

           

After just one full season in the Scottish Championship, Simmo moved up to the British Championships in 1988 and finished second in the 600cc Honda Cup and second in the British Production Championship on a Suzuki GSX-R1100.

           

Simpson’s performances that year finally won his dad Bill round. ‘I finished third in the first 600cc Honda Cup race at Donington and my dad was there watching’ he explains. ‘I don’t think he could believe that I finished third in amongst all the proper fast boys. Then, when I won the second round at Carnaby, he started coming to every race with me.’  Bill Simpson would act as mechanic and right-hand man for his son for the rest of his career.

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Simmo’s 1988 performances also attracted the attention of Mick Grant, boss of the Heron Suzuki team at the time. He loaned Simpson a Suzuki GSX600F for a few races, but the young Scotsman wasn’t impressed. ‘I just couldn’t get on with that bike’ he says. ‘I couldn’t believe how fast my team-mate, Jamie Whitham, could ride that bike, because it was just crap!’

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Despite hating the bike, Simmo managed to win some races on it and landed a full-time ride with Grant’s newly sponsored Durex Suzuki team in 1989, alongside Jamie Whitham and Phil ‘Mez’ Mellor. ‘I was riding a GSX-600F, a GSX-R1100, and I also had a GSX-R750 Formula 1 bike for a couple of races’ Simmo says. ‘It wasn’t a great season, but I won quite a few races in the Production Championship and finished sixth overall, and I was seventh in the Supersport 600 Championship. The bikes weren’t great, and the Michelin tyres weren’t great at the time either, and I was still struggling with that soft and soggy 600.’

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The Durex Suzuki team was a happy outfit until tragedy struck at the 1989 TT. In what was 18-year-old Simmo’s first year at the event after two years at the Manx, he would lose three close friends in the space of a few days. ‘Phil Mellor had looked after me so much that year, so that was a terrible loss’ he says. ‘Phil Hogg was also killed, and he was one of my best pals in racing. And Steve Henshaw, who was one of my dad’s best pals, also lost his life. So, within a few days, I’d lost three people I was really close to, and I just thought “Fuck this.”        Jamie Whitham would never race at the TT again and Simmo also walked away, for the time being, at least.

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For the 1990 season Simmo had attracted sponsorship from Scottish Contractor Norrie Lymburn and Irish car dealer Frances Neill and would move up to the Superbike class full-time. ‘I’d done a few races on a Superbike for Granty’s team in 1989 - including the Eurolantic Match Races - but this was my first full season on one’ Simmo says. I had a Honda RC30 for the Superbike class and a Carrick Motorcycles Yamaha FZR600 for the Supersport class. I mostly raced the 600 in the European Championshisp that year and finished third in that series.

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It was an encouraging debut in the British 750cc TTF1 Championship too: Simpson finished seventh and top privateer. He would finish in the same position the following year but would also take his first major championship in 1991 under the most extraordinary circumstances.

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Simmo turned up at Mallory Park for the final round of the British Supersport 600 Championship with a slender four-point lead over Mark Farmer. After just nine laps of practice, Simmo crashed heavily and broke his back in two places. His season should have been over, but Simmo simply wasn’t prepared to accept that. ‘I signed myself out of hospital in time to race’ he says ruefully. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I was in absolute agony, and my back has never healed properly - it still gives me a lot of pain today. But I was so determined to win that championship.’

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After being lifted onto his Yamaha FZR600, Simmo found himself in fourth place, and in excruciating pain, half-way round the last lap. Farmer was in the lead, and all the pain and effort looked to be in vain. Somehow, Simpson managed to dig even deeper and overtook his other title rival, Phil Borley, for third. To win the championship, he needed to finish second to Farmer. Moodie was all that now stood between Ian Simpson and his first major championship victory. In an act of friendship that has cost Simpson more than a few beers over the years, Moodie moved over at the final hairpin, blocked Borley, and let his great pal Simpson through to finish second. It was enough to take the title by one point. Few championships have taken such courage and determination to win.

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There were big plans for the 1992 season but, ultimately, not enough budget to capitalise on them. Simpson and Moodie decided to contest the World Superbike Championship on privately entered bikes, in Simmo’s case, a Kawasaki ZXR750. ‘The bikes we had just weren’t fast enough’ Simmo says. ‘We were riding souped-up road bikes against full factory competition, but we learned a lot by riding in WSB that year. I qualified for every race, which doesn’t sound much, but sometimes there would be 110 riders trying to qualify for the races! I remember that, at Hockenheim, there were three practice sessions just to get the numbers whittled down for qualifying. I didn’t score a point that year, but I was generally just outside the points on a good day.’

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To make matters worse, Simmo didn’t get on with Pirelli’s slicks but couldn’t afford to buy the more competitive Michelins, so he often raced on Cary Fogarty’s part-worn tyres. When asked what he got out of contesting the 1992 World Superbike season, Simpson once replied ‘A suntan and my arse kicked!’

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There were successes on the domestic front, however. Simmo took his first international road race win in the Supersport 600 race at the Ulster Grand Prix and was leading both the Supersport 400 and 600 British championships (he couldn’t afford to run his Superbike in UK meetings) until he crashed at Cadwell and broke his right femur. It was the first of many leg breaks that would eventually spell the end of his career.

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Before breaking his leg, Simpson was invited to stand in for Ron Haslam (who had also broken his leg) on the rotary-engined JPS Norton at Knockhill. ‘My first thought on riding the Norton was “How the f*ck does anybody go so quick on this thing?”’ he says. ‘The throttle was like an on/off switch, and when you closed the throttle and lent the bike over it pushed the front wide at every corner - the lack of engine braking was even more pronounced than on a two-stroke. And the riding position was ridiculous - my knees were up around my elbows and the handlebars made me feel like I was hanging onto the fork clamps. I like plenty of room to move on a bike and the Norton didn't have any. But I knew it was a good bike, so I just had to get my head round riding it properly.’  Despite having such limited time on such a quirky bike, Simmo managed two eighth places and put himself firmly on the radar of Norton boss Brian Crighton. It would not be the last time he rode one of the British bikes.

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After winning the Supersport 400 British Championship and finishing second to Moodie in the 600 Championship in 1993, Simmo found himself lining up for the 1994 season in a new Duckham’s-backed Norton team, with Colin Seeley as team boss and Brian Crighton – the technical genius who had built and developed the bike - as chief engineer. He also had a Yamaha YZR600 to run in the Supersport class, although he hadn’t really planned on racing in both championships. 'I only did it because I wasn’t getting paid a penny by Norton and I knew I could make some money in the 600 championship with Avon Tyres and Yamaha’ Simmo says.

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Now on the Norton full-time, it still took some getting used to. ‘It took me a good three or four meetings before I figured it out - lightening the back end to stop it pushing the front and learning to be smoother on the throttle’ Simmo says. ‘The Norton was easy to ride slow, but it was another thing altogether to ride it fast.’

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While most people thought the rotary-engined Norton had an unfair speed advantage, Simmo fiercely disputes this. ‘It's a total misconception that the 1994 bike was much faster than anything else’ he insists. ‘I mean, it was definitely quick, but no quicker than the competition. We just had a good team and, once we got it sorted, a good-handling bike. The 1994 engine was the same as they had been using in 1988 when the Nortons first started racing. In 1988 the Norton was racing against early Suzuki GSX-R750s and Yamaha FZ750s, so it was miles quicker than those bikes, but it handled terribly. By 1994, the competition was just as fast, but we had the handling sorted, so it was a good package.’

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While British race fans got very excited about an all-British bike winning the British championship, Simmo didn’t quite sign up to the patriotic fervour. ‘I never quite got my head around that whole flag-waving thing’ he says. ‘To be honest, I didn't give a shit what make of bike I was riding - I'd have happily ridden a Ural if it was fast enough! Bikes are just nuts and bolts and, to me, racing is much more about the riders than the teams or the bikes. What I did care about was guys like Brian Crichton and Colin Seeley, and my mechanic Dave Hickman, who would work all night to get my bikes ready - I wanted to get results far more for them than for the fact that I was on a British bike.’

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Jumping between bikes meant very swift visits to the podium in 1994 as Simmo often had to get straight back out on another machine. But that's where a good team boss can help. 'I had to cut them short sometimes, but I did always try and do the podium for both championships. I don’t think I missed any. Colin Seeley was really good with the organisers - he’d phone up and make sure there was a race run in between the Supersport bikes and the Superbikes, so I at least had a bit of time to switch between the two and change leathers.'

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Simpson wrapped up the 600 title with a round to spare, beating Mike 'Spike' Edwards to the championship by 15 points (Simmo took six wins to Edwards' five). The Superbike championship went down to the final round at Brands Hatch, but a win in the opening leg ahead of Borley and Moodie sealed the title to make it a double. 'I just felt massive relief as I crossed the line' Simmo says. 'It was more relief than joy, although obviously I was very happy too. But we'd done what we'd set out to do and it was a huge relief to have that weight lifted off my shoulders.'

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Winning both major British titles in the same year is a feat that hasn’t been repeated and may never be. ‘It was really difficult’ Simmo admits. ‘You tended to ride the smaller bike better because it’s much easier after the Superbike, but it probably slows you down on the big bike. You need both bikes to be set up well and good crews around you too. It was good for winning more prize money though! I think the only reason that no-one’s done it since is because the prize money isn’t there anymore.’

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After the 1994 season the Norton team folded due to lack of interest from the firm’s owners and Simmo, as the reigning British Superbike champion, had a choice to make – to race in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship on a customer Padgett’s Yamaha, or in the British Superbike Championship on a factory Castrol Honda RC45.

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