Guy Martin

Guy Martin is a British former motorcycle racer, heavy vehicle mechanic and television presenter. He retired from motorcycle racing in July 2017.
Martin started racing in 1998 and in 2004 competed on a road circuit for the first time at the Isle of Man TT. He has a total of 17 podium finishes at TT events. He has broken his back twice in racing accidents, in the 2010 TT and the 2015 Ulster Grand Prix.
In August 2017, Martin joined Formula 1 car team Williams' pit-crew for the Belgian GP. Martin returned to road racing in May 2019 at the Tandragee 100 in Northern Ireland.
Martin starred in Closer to the Edge, a 2011 documentary on TT racing. He has since presented programmes on various engineering topics, as well as the Channel 4 series Speed with Guy Martin when he set speed records in a variety of human and engine powered vehicles. He has also written four books, and competed in mountain bike pedal-cycle races.

Early life

Martin was born on 4 November 1981, in a suburb of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England. He was named Guy in tribute to Guy Gibson of No. 617 Squadron RAF. His father Ian was a privateer motorbike racer who had competed in several Isle of Man TT events, but was forced to supplement his income with a job as a lorry mechanic, additionally selling bikes. His mother, Rita Kidals, was of Latvian heritage, her father having come to Britain in 1947 as a political refugee. Soon after Martin's birth, the family moved to a house outside the town, where they remained.
His mother was from Nettleton, Lincolnshire, near Caistor; her father Walter Kidals was an immigrant. Walter was a builder.
His father, Ian Martin, was also from Nettleton, and attended the Yarborough Secondary School in the early 1960s, the son of Jack Martin. His grandfather Jack married his grandmother, May, on 9 August 1945 at Nettleton church. His grandmother, May, died in May 2002.
Martin has two sisters and a brother. His brother, Stuart, is also a truck mechanic and motorbike racer. His younger sister, Kate, was the first female mechanic in the BSB paddock before leaving to start a family with two-times TT sidecar winner, Patrick Farrance. Martin and his siblings attended every Isle of Man TT from their births, until their father Ian crashed his Yamaha FZ750 whilst racing at Oliver's Mount, Scarborough in 1988, when Guy was aged 7. After recovering from the resulting broken hip, Martin's father did not race again, but worked as a mechanic in classic bike racing.
Martin attended Kirmington Church of England Primary School and The Vale Academy school, leaving at age 16.

Career

Mechanic

Martin had shown an interest in working on trucks as early as age 12. As a child he was fascinated by engines, and would take apart lawnmowers to try to make them go faster.
Post-school he enrolled in North Lindsey College on a motor vehicle engineering course, but on recognising further education without pay was not for him, he secured an apprenticeship as a truck fitter with a Volvo centre, John Hebb Volvo. He also worked for his father, who at the time was self-employed, running a truck maintenance business. Filming commitments for The Boat that Guy Built led to him losing his job with his father, but Martin immediately went into town to apply for another truck job. He currently works for Moody International, a Scania centre in Grimsby. He only takes short periods off to race or do television work.
He also earns money by tuning fellow racers' bikes in the evenings, and takes casual work during TT race weeks. Eager to keep his options open, he has even acquired a tractor via a TV deal, using it on biomass farms for seasonal muck-spreading at night.

Racing

While completing his apprenticeship as a lorry mechanic, Martin raced motorbikes in his spare time. Martin returned to the Isle of Man at age 16. After overhearing lorry driver and amateur racer Baz Kirk discussing his plans to race in the 1997 Manx Grand Prix with his father, he was offered the chance to assist him as a race mechanic.
Martin decided to take up racing after a crash on public roads at age 18. He moved to Ireland to join Team Racing. In 2004 he moved to the Uel Duncan Racing team, staying with them until 2005. In 2006 Martin raced for Alistair Flanagan's AIM Yamaha race team, replacing John McGuinness. In the search for a more competitive team, Martin joined Hydrex Honda for the 2007 season.
The end of 2009 saw Martin leave Hydrex for Northern Ireland-based Wilson Craig Honda, but since November 2010, Martin has raced for TAS Racing, the team run by the Neill family also based in Northern Ireland, and with a long TT heritage. This switch to what was effectively a factory team meant the end of tuning his own equipment – at TAS, he would simply be riding pre-prepared machines.
Martin agreed a new deal for 2015 with TAS after the team signed a new equipment deal with BMW Motorrad, to ride the BMW S1000RR alongside William Dunlop. Martin was prepared to retire had TAS not chosen to switch to BMW, believing he had raced the Suzuki as hard as he could. With the new bike, he ran his fastest ever lap of the TT circuit in June 2015 – – just outside the outright lap record.
Martin suffered a serious crash in the Dundrod 150 Superbike event, part of the Ulster Grand Prix races in August 2015. Following the crash, Martin only got back on his racing motorbike in March 2016, for the filming of the F1 special for his Speed series.
Since 2011, he has also got into bicycle racing, in 24-hour events. For the 2016 season Martin decided not to race in the TT for the first time in 11 years, opting instead for a mountain bike race. He was uncertain if the decision would lead him to retire from road racing, mountain bike racing, or if he would go on to do something else, but said "if I do race on the roads it will be with TAS".
Martin signed a new deal with Honda Racing on 18 January 2017 to ride the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP2, rekindling his ambition to win the Isle of Man TT and renewing his focus on his road racing career.

Television

Martin first came to the attention of TV executives in 2009 when he appeared in an ITV4 programme intended primarily for fans of that year's TT race. The then film-producer, Andy Spellman, filmed with Martin at the TT. Spellman shot some additional test material of Martin back at home in the summer and the boss of North One Television showed the clips to a BBC executive.
Having engaged Andy Spellman as his advisor and agent in 2009, Martin worked with North One Television producers James Woodroffe and Ewan Keil, who he still works with to this day. Martin's first appearances on TV documentaries were on programmes based around his passion for engineering rather than his love of adrenaline sport - The Boat that Guy Built airing on the BBC in 2011; and How Britain Worked on Channel 4 in 2012. His thrill-seeking side later emerged with the production of the series Speed with Guy Martin, first airing on Channel 4 in 2013. Uncomfortable with presenting to camera or working from a script, his preferred style is to improvise his dialogue, and work by responding to questions from crew off camera.
He later turned down an invitation from Chris Evans to join the new presenting team of the BBC's motoring show, Top Gear.

Work ethic

Martin attributes his strong work ethic to his father's example. He has also retained his truck job in part due to the financial security it offered over racing. Describing it as "like an ingrained, default setting", he prioritises his mechanic job over other work, even cancelling complicated film shoots at short notice if needed. He also seeks out casual work as a way to switch off during TT events.

Writing

Martin has written three books about his life, releasing his autobiography, Guy Martin: My Autobiography, on 8 May 2014. It reached No. 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list and remained there for at least six weeks, and eventually became the second best selling autobiography of 2014. This was followed by Guy Martin: When You’re Dead, You’re Dead, released on 22 October 2015, and covering the previous year in diary format, from the 24-hour Solo World Mountain Bike Championship to the Isle of Man TT. It was listed No. 1 in Amazon's sales figures for celebrity autobiographies in November 2015, with his main autobiography being No. 10. October 2016 saw the release of Guy Martin: Worms to Catch featuring Martin's thoughts on the past year and upcoming challenges. He has subsequently published further titles, We Need to Weaken the Mixture and Dead Men Don't Tell Tales.
Martin is also listed as the author of companion books for some of his television shows: How Britain Worked, published on 4 October 2012 and Speed, published on 1 December 2013.
Martin also writes for the driving section of The Sunday Times newspaper. He has written reviews of the 2015 Aston Martin Vanquish Carbon, the 2015 Range Rover Sport SVR, the 2015 Ford Transit L2 H2, and the 2016 Ford Mustang V8 GT, as well as writing about his own Volvo Vöx and his Wall of Death show.

Speed records

Martin has set the following speed records.

Record	Issuer	Speed	Location	Date	Previous holder	Ref.
Fastest speed on a gravity powered snow sled	Guinness World Records		Grandvalira, Andorra	10 January 2014
Fastest speed in a soapbox	Guinness World Records		Mont Ventoux, France	16 October 2014
Highest speed on a Wall of Death	Guinness World Records		Manby Airfield, England	28 March 2016	created for the attempt
Fastest hovercraft	British record		Loch Ken, Scotland	8 October 2014
Fastest tractor	Guinness World Records		Elvington Airfield, York, England	23 October 2019		-

In July 2015 it was confirmed that Martin was to pilot Triumph Motorcycles' attempt on the motorcycle land speed record, at the time standing at 376.363 mph, set by Rocky Robinson in 2010. The attempt was originally scheduled for August during the FIM event at Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States. Competing in the Division C category, the Triumph Rocket Streamliner is 25.5 feet long, powered by two turbocharged, methanol fuelled, Triumph Rocket III engines, enclosed in a carbon Kevlar monocoque. A documentary about the attempt was made for Channel 4. His August 2015 crash at the Ulster GP caused the attempt to be postponed until September 2016.
Martin's quest to set a new two-wheeled world land speed record was called off due to conditions on the course. The attempt, on the purpose-built 400 mph motorcycle, suffered a number of setbacks at the track at the Bonneville Salt Flats.
The streamliner tipped over when it passed over a rut in the track as it was being towed to the start line. Triumph said rain meant it was not possible to create the required-consistency across the 11-mile course necessary to undertake the attempt. On 18 September 2016, Martin had hoped to complete a required 300 mph trial run before attempting to set a new world record.
A mile into the run the machine lost traction on the damp surface, veering off the steered path and tipping over on the course. Martin was confirmed to be "completely uninjured" and the record attempt was postponed once more.