Chris Cooke

Interview with Chris Cooke

Interview by Matt Compton
22nd Sept 2019

Matt
Hi Chris, Matt Compton here, you and I had a bit to do with each other in the mid 90’s.

Chris
Yes, you bought Webrook Ducati !

Matt
That’s right. Our mechanic, Gavin, introduced us and you raced the Magni-Guzzi for us for a year.

Chris
Yep, Gavin Carlini. I’d hurt my Suzuki and Gavin offered me the Magni to ride. I’d posted a few things on the Magni-Guzzi group page and thought, “I really don’t know who ‘Magni-Guzzi’ is, but I’m betting it’s Matt!”. Is the bike still around?

Matt
Yeah, yeah, it’s at Mario Poggioli’s Thunderbikes. So what are you doing with yourself?

Chris
For the last seven years or so I’ve been looking after a wide variety of customers in the oil and gas industry. So you’re putting a bit of a tribute page together for Ted.

Matt
Yes, I started off with a Facebook group to connect with people, as I’m gathering stories and photos to put a website together in honour of Ted and to preserve the history of his two prototypes.

Chris
Fantastic, that’s good.

Matt
So far I’ve spoken with Mark Purdy, who you know, and Simon Turner, gathering stories and photos. Do you know Simon?

Chris
I know of Simon, he raced in Perth for a little bit in the early days. I started racing in the 80’s on TZ250’s. I did five or six years on GP bikes, that was where Ted used to come through the pits. Ted was really actively involved as his prototypes were being developed. He would come up and say, “I want you riding my bike, and you will come to the tuning day on this date!”. He would have half a dozen guys sitting on the pit wall. The bike would go out and would cut three or four laps and Ted would sit there with a stop watch and you’d come in get off it and give it to the next guy. At the end of the day whoever was fastest got to ride the bike.

Matt
Interesting …

Chris
I always had my GP bike and I just sorta said, “Nah, I’m not really interested Ted, I’m focusing on my GP career”. Local GP career that is, I’m a backyard operator and I used every cent that I earned on the bike. I was living at home and I enjoyed my racing, although I did get horribly smashed up in 1982. Spent fifty days in intensive care and three weeks in a ward, I lost a third of one lung on the right hander after the left [at Wanneroo]. As you go through the esses, around the left, flick on to the right, I lost it right there. That was my second race meeting. I died three times! Once at the track, once in the ambulance and once at the hospital.

Matt
Whoa! I think someone up there is looking after you!

Chris
That’s exactly what I said. So when I came out of hospital I went, “I’m going back racing”. My parents were like, “Nah, we’d prefer you didn’t”. I said, “Look, I’ve come that close three times, it’s not my time. I’m put here for a reason, I’m gonna keep doing what I do until that reason becomes prevalent”. So they sort of went, “Well, while you live under our roof we’d prefer you didn’t”. So I bought a house two doors up. [Laughing]

Matt
[Laughing] So are you still two doors away from them?

Chris
Up until a few years ago, my father passed away and they sold the house. The house that I bought two doors up I demolished eight years ago and rebuilt another house on the block. So I’ve lived in that street, within two houses, all my life.

I’ve still got all my race bikes, the TZ’s and my GSXR. After the TZ’s I bought Gordon Smith’s Freedom Wheels black GSXR Proddy. Did four or five years on that as a production bike and just absolutely beat it to death. That was where Gavin Carlini and myself were racing together. He was racing 250 proddies and I was racing 250GP. Then he moved into the 750 class with his VFR and I had my GSXR. When the Suzuki lunched itself one meeting and dropped a valve, I had nothing to ride. At that stage Gavin had just started working for you guys down on Beechboro Road and I was working on Guildford Road in Bayswater, so I used to come through the back streets after work and drop in and see him.

Matt
That’s right.

Chris
Gavin took me over to the Magni-Guzzi [Prototype #2] and he goes, “Hey, while the Suzuki’s broken, why don’t you ride this?”. I went, “Aww, big lump of snot. Nah, it’s a piece or crap, look at it!”. But Gavin says, “You ride that, or you’ve got nothing to ride until you fix the Suzuki. I’m going to race the Super Sport”. So he raced the Super Sport Ducati for you guys, the 900. I turned up one Thursday night after work and we bump-started the Guzzi on Beechboro Road. I went down the road and around a bit and thought, “This thing’s got some go!”.

Matt
It was surprisingly nimble wasn’t it?

Chris
It was! Honestly it was one of the best things I have ever ridden! After I started riding it Ted came up to me and said, “One day, I told you, one day you will ride my bike!”, and I said “Yep”. Then Ted went on, “Now, you stop riding it like a Suzuki, stop dancing on the gear lever! You need three gear changes, that’s all you need! One here, one there, one there, any more than that you are wasting time!”. I was like, “Alright, well it’s his bike, I’ll give it a go”.

Then I met Spike [Russell Aylward] in the pits, apparently he was on the build of these bikes in some fashion. Spike said, “This one here, you have to monster it! Down the straight, roll it off, then get back on it and stand on the inside peg well before the apex! When everyone else is struggling to get traction, you’re on the gas and you’re gone!”. I followed Spike’s advice and I was like, “This thing’s a mission! It’s … just … fast!”. Spike did a lot of development on that thing and got it to basically where it was. If you listened to his advice on the Magni you were a force to be reckoned with, cos your bike had the WP forks, the bigger brakes, the Marvics; the better bits of the two bikes by far. At that stage I was running 66’s and 67’s [lap times] on my Suzuki but I ran 63’s on the Guzzi.

Matt
That’s some good lap times!

Chris
Ted came up to me and said, “No one has gone that fast on this bike!”. When I was racing the Magni, Nick Philips was racing the Moto Guzzi Daytona, then Jon Iles raced it after him. Nick and I had a lot of good duels, we’d raced GP’s together many a time. I remember one very wet day, Nick was on the Daytona and Gavin was on the Ducati, both on wets. Then Gavin sort of went, “Well, we didn’t have any wets for you so you’ve got slicks”. Ted said to me in the pits, “You will not take this bike out, it is not safe on slicks!”. I said, “You’ve given me the bike to ride, I’m here to ride it, I’m gonna ride it. Whatever setup it’s got!”. I rode the entire meeting, belting with rain, on slicks, and got some of my best places! Then the next couple of meetings Nick and I were fairly close and Ted said, “You cannot beat Nick. We can sell the Daytona, we cannot sell the Magni, so Nick must win!”. I went, “Is that so”. [Laughing]

Nick and I used to play, severely, it was well set up! We’d be passing one another backwards and forwards really closely, we trusted one another’s riding skills. We would play around something fierce, dicing between 1st and 2nd, back and forth. The field were well behind us, couldn’t catch us. Nick would say, “Play all we like until the last lap, then the gloves are off!”. It was always really close but Ted said, “Nick will always win”. “Yep, no worries”, I said. First place, second place, who cares, I was out there, I was having a ball.

Matt
Very true!

Chris
The Magni, it was just one of those bikes. Once you got the feeling of it, you could do just about anything with it. I crashed it once at Wanneroo, on the right hander after the left from the esses. I tried to poke it into a gap that closed, the guy shut the gate on me and I just ran fair in the back of him. I had a full head of steam up and I was coming! I couldn’t back it off in time and I hit him and crashed it there. On one Le Mans start, I ran across the track, jumped on it, gave it a big fist-full on cold tyres and did a big wizzy in the middle of the track! I think the exhaust pipe popped off the spigot or something. I know another time I kneed the carburettor off when I dived on it.

Matt
I did that once, the left one, knocked it clean off. [Laughing]

Chris
[Laughing] Yeah, well it’s sort of stuck out there and it was like, “Doof, doof, doof and I realised, “Oh, it’s on one cylinder”. So I slammed that back on and yep, away we went! Once you got the knack of it, you could monster it into corners and you were getting the power down a lot earlier than what the multis were.

Over my time racing, the Magni was really my one and only ever sponsored ride. I’d pick up the bike on the Thursday or Friday afternoon, take it to the track and then drop it off the next Monday. You guys even bought me a helmet.

Matt
Did we?

Chris
Because I’d crashed it over the top of the hill one meeting, and went down hard on my head. So you guys said, “Go and get yourself a helmet and we’ll pay for it”. So I ended up with an AGV.

Matt
I hope it was a nice one?

Chris
It was! I’ve still got it. It doesn’t get used anymore, it’s one of those mementos that sits on the shelf. The Shoei from the crash that’s got all the side torn out of it, that sits on the shelf as well.

Matt
That was 1994 hey?

Chris
Yep. I’d just met my girlfriend at the time when I started riding the Magni and we got married in 1996, I’d just won the last Prince of Collie event. Got the Suzuki up and running again in 1995, ran that fairly consistently and then built an engine for Collie. It was the end of an era, last Round-the-Houses there was ever going to be and I thought, “I’m gonna win it or bin it, one of the two!”. So I built an absolute weapon of an engine and won two out of the three legs resoundingly. We won that in 1996 and a week later I got married! There was a deal I had to do with me wife. She said, “You can build this engine and you can go racing, but as soon as we come home we’re getting married the next week!”. I went, “Yes dear, no worries”. [Laughing]

Matt
[Laughing] Fantastic, that’s awesome!

Chris
In 2001 I went up for a historic day [at Wanneroo] and I top qualified for grid position. I was the first into the corner, but one of the boys had oiled the esses …

Matt
Oh no!

Chris
… and I was the first to find it! The GSXR end for ended itself the full length of the esses and I bounced up over the fence and just looked at it. At that stage I had two daughters both under two in prams and I thought, “Ah, I’m really getting too old for this shit!”. So I looked at the bike and went, “Yeah, that’s not pretty”. The back Marvic was bent, the aluminium tank was all smashed in, gauges were all smashed off and I thought, “I really can’t be bothered doing this anymore”. So I took it home, put it on the bench and slowly just tinkered with it.

We went back to Collie in 2016 and did the commemoration event. Hadn’t lost it … I was still an idiot. [Laughing] So I said to the wife, “I could do this again!”. She said, “Don’t be an idiot, you could not! You’re over 50, you’re getting your ambitions mixed up with your capabilities”. So it’s just one of those things.

Matt
So when you interacted with Ted was the bike still in the green and gold livery?

Chris
Back in the early days when Ted was saying, “You will come and ride my bike”. I’d always think, “I don’t wanna ride your bike. The only thing that has two cylinders like that is an air compressor”. As I recall, it was red and it already had the Daytona seat on it. It had the 4V prototype Daytona engine, it had the WP forks, Brembo brakes and the WP shockies on the back. It was an absolute rocket and handled really well. The tacho never worked, so you never knew what revs you were doing, you just rode by the seat of your pants. If you revved it too far it went “booooaaaaahh” , and you knew, “oops too far”. So you just got the feel of … rev it this hard, and that’s all it needs. Please note: For correct pronunciation of “booooaaaaahh” press the play button below.

I raced it early days with the full fairing but dropped the bottom half off because I just didn’t like it. When I crashed on the hill my mate made the new mufflers for it cos the Rennsports got really mashed. So when I saw the posts on the Facebook page with you on the bike I thought, “They’re the mufflers that Gavin Forbes made for me”. I went, “No lower fairing, new mufflers, that’s definitely after the year I was on it”. I’ve still got the rocker cover with the big hole in it from when it fell over.

Once I got my Suzuki back I was like, “Yep, I’m off in this direction”. By that stage I’d probably started to get a bit serious about series points but never really had the backing or the dollars. I’m still friends with Morrisini [Phil Morrison]. He’s got Guzzis as well, he raced Moto Guzzis, we’re in the vintage club together. I was gonna catch up with him last Wednesday at the meeting and go, “Hey, look at this Facebook page!”, he’d be all over it as well.

After that I built a monster engine for the Suzuki; 920cc with about 125-130 horses at the rear wheel. Very responsive, really, really responsive, it had good torque from about 4500. I used to rev mine to about 14000, but when we stuck it up on the dyno we saw that it went flat from 9250 on and that it was a waste of time revving past that point.

Then what Ted said to me came back, “No good, no good, lots of revs”. He said, “You only rev it there to there, after that, no good!”. So we wound it back, didn’t bother revving past 9250 and saved the engine. With the development I did on it I was trying to replicate the torque of a V-twin; cos that Magni, it was just nice and fat, you could just get on the gas and, “Vrooop”, off it went! Whereas the Suzukis and other multis tend to get a little bit hyperactive in the back end and you end up speedways style coming out of the corners, and that’s not fast. You know I put in my best ever times on your Magni!

Matt
Really?

Chris
I did replicate the times for a couple of laps, but not regularly. With the Magni I could sit and do 63’s, but the Suzuki I’d do 64’s and 65’s and drop an occasional 63 in.

Matt
That’s interesting, 64's were my best lap times on the Magni. It was actually Russell Gidley [Kawasaki Northside] one practice day at Wanneroo who helped me crack those quicker lap times. He offered to help and within 15 minutes he'd set up the suspension perfectly. That day my times dropped from 67's to 64's ! It was greatly appreciated.

Chris
Yeah, Russell’s very good, he’d ride anything and he was fairly fast at it. He had good knowledge, and many years of experience up there.

Matt
Any other recollections of Ted or your time on the bike? Do you remember if we did any performance work or modifications on it that year? I didn’t keep any records from that time.

Chris
Nah, it was just, ride it, put tyres on it. As much as I tried to get the tacho working everyone was always like, “Well that’s never worked”. Whenever I saw Ted and spoke to him he was, “Ahh, you don’t need that! Ride by your bum, ride by the seat of your pants! You can feel when it’s pulling!”. So I was like, “Alright! Yep, we’ll do that then”. You knew when you revved it too hard, it just sort of went, “Baaaaoooorrr!”, and ya knew, “Oops, it’s gone flat, hook another gear”. In between, just keep it in that power range and most of the time it was just roll it off, roll it on, roll it off, roll it on. You could darn near hold third gear all the way up through the esses, the left hander then down into the basin; click it down one, before the apex, nail it out of the corner, wait til it’s straightened up, hook the next one and you’d hold that all the way over the hill til the bottom then back one for the corner. Ted said, “You only need three gear changes! Three gear changes around Wanneroo, all you need!”.

Matt
[Laughing] It was probably a good thing I kept it as it was. I had wanted to up-spec it to Amedeo Castellani’s Raceco UK Daytona spec. Cos I think in those classes you could up the capacity to 1200 or 1300cc and still be eligible. I think Raceco’s Daytona put out 125-135hp at the rear wheel and that was always my goal but it was probably good I didn’t. It was probably a lot safer for me as it was.

Chris
Well that other one that they built, the Guzzilla, the one that Nick was racing, that had all the full monty on it. It was also injected and remapped and this and that. That thing had some horsepower! I think Purdy raced that one as well, I’m not certain, but I think he did Bathurst on Guzzilla.

Matt
I’ll have to check my notes, I know he did crash at Bathurst but I can’t recall which bike he was on.

Chris
He crashed at Bathurst before 2000, cos when I met him at Bathurst he said the track beat him last time and he crashed. It nearly killed him too, it was a nasty one. He said, "I’m only here for some unfinished business”. I said, “I’m only here to say I’ve ridden Bathurst”. Mark gave me a lot of good information across the top of the mountain. If I’d gone out and done normal classic lines I would have been in the wall very quickly.

Matt
Bathurst seems like a very technically challenging track.

Chris
It is. It is.

Matt
Did you ever chat to Ted about the origin of the engine or the frame?

Chris
No. I knew they were prototypes and that there was only the two of them, but as for history, I didn’t know much. My time with it started like I said, when the bike first came to the track and Ted used to go, “Who wants to ride my bike?”. He’d say to me, “You will ride my bike!”, and I said to him, “No I won’t! Not interested, I’ve got my own bikes!”. Then right at the end, when you guys had bought the shop, I got offered it and rode it cos I had nothing else and I went, “Wow, this things a weapon!”. So in the end, Ted was right, and I loved it! But I only did that one season and at the end handed it back to you guys, fixed the Suzuki and carried on.

Well, sounds like my dinner’s on the table … I’ll have to run.

Matt
For sure, well thanks so much for your time Chris, and the photos you’ve already sent me. Take care and talk soon.

Chris
No worries, we’ll keep in touch and see what else you come up with.