He helped revolutionise Grand Prix safety and got on the podium at Macau in 1978. We distract Mike Trimby from organising the British GP and ask: Did you really hire a Jumbo Jet to fly to Daytona?
Mike Trimby is arguably one of the most influential ppeople in Grand Prix racing throughout the last 40 years. After all, without the ex-racer’s work to improve the horrendously dangerous tracks that were commonplace in the 1980s, it’s almost certain that some of motorcycling’s greatest riders would have died long before achieving their potential.
That might sound over-dramatic, but back in the early 1980s Grand Prix circuits were almost as perilous as the TT, with Armco where you’d expect run-off and huge wooden poles holding catch-fencing in the gravel traps. Five GP riders died in 1983 alone – more than in the last 20 years of modern-day GPs – but the circuit organisers didn’t care, because the money kept rolling in. “It was carnage,” says Mike. “The riders were an after-thought.”
In 1982 he got a phone call from his friend, the journalist and commentator Chris Carter, who said the Grand Prix riders, led by Kenny Roberts, wanted someone to represent them and that Mike should meet them at an international race meeting at Donington. “The riders needed more money, better facilities and safer tracks, and I said I’d have a go at getting them. They agreed to pay me three percent of their prize money, which was a pittance. I used to earn about £700 for a GP, and spend £500 getting there.”
The first GP Mike attended as the riders’ representative was in Yugoslavia – and it pr
