Aaron Slight

The fastest rider who never won a WSB title explains what world championship racing feels like, and how to adapt to normal life afterwards.

What were the physical demands of doing a WSB race?

I don’t believe there is anything harder than doing a race. You didn’t need to go to the gym afterwards; you were in recovery mode for three days! Your back, your arms – you couldn’t move. Somewhere like Hockenheim, for example, where the thing’s trying to wobble its head off on the straights, and you’re trying to hold it flat stick...

What did you do to improve?

Mick Doohan and I were two of the innovators to get fitter so we could ride the bikes harder for longer. We lived in Monaco at the time and because we were in different championships we used to go biking together, try and beat each other up. I was cycling two-and-a-half hours a day, and I knew when I looked along the grid no one was going to be as fit as me. I’d been building up for a few years.

How exactly did fitness help?

It’s all oxygen to the brain. If you can’t get it there, you can’t think straight and you can’t be within a tenth of a second every lap. You’ll make that little mistake, run wide. And the next lap you’ll run wide again.

If you’re fit, then as long as the tyres stay consistent, your lap times stay within a tenth. Or if the tyre was getting bad it fell off a tenth, two tenths – but at the same rate. You never go half a second slower, then improve. It’s always tailing off – unless you make a superhuman effort on the last lap and go faster than you’ve gone all day. Otherwise it’s always minute differences.

As fans we had no idea it was such a big mental and physical challenge.