We may discover to what extent on Saturday night when the World Boxing Council super- middleweight champion steps into the ring at the London Arena in Docklands to meet Vincenzo Nardiello, of Italy. If we had been on competitive bikes we would have been on the front row, but we didn’t qualify. We were first and second on the reserve list but nobody dropped out so we did not race. It was a great embarrassment for Honda, who had again taken up half the paddock with great big awnings advertising their new machine. We were served smoked salmon for lunch by waiters in white jackets, but we hadn’t even made it on to the grid..

We rode so hard in practice that we were two-wheel drifting on every corner. The only record we ever held on the NR was that on its debut I went 300 yards before I crashed it.Later that season I went with Takazumi to Le Mans – that was a riot. I knocked the throttle off going into the first bend where the crowd could see the back wheel was very well lubricated, but I couldn’t So down I went. We knew we weren’t going to finish as Honda thought that would be less embarrassing than finishing last.There wasn’t even enough fuel in the tanks to complete the race.When the bike did fire, I was on the back of the seat.

I went down the straight on the back wheel but, unknown to me, the oil had tipped back in the gearbox and covered the breather hole The engine was pumping all the oil on to the back wheel. Takazumi started his first time but I took three goes to get mine on the move He waited for me, but eventually got fed up and went off. That was at a time when I was riding better than ever before.In those days there were no clutch starts, the only way to get the bike going was to run and bump- start it. As the bike didn’t tick over until 7,000rpm you needed legs like Linford Christie to get it going. In the British Grand Prix at Silverstone my team-mate was Takazumi Katayama and we were the last two qualifiers on the grid.