Parkalgar Honda rider Eugene Laverty is currently enjoying a tremendous season in the World Supersport championship and we caught up with him to find out more about the Northern Ireland rider and what's next in his career...
How did you get into riding?
My dad was a road racer back in the 1970’s and once our eldest sister Emma was born, he quit racing. He retired at quite a young age, but there were always bikes around the house when I was growing up. Michael and John had motocross bikes and they put me on a bike when I was three-years-old and then we starting racing motocross just for fun and we did that all through the 1990’s and then our dad gave us the opportunity to try road racing. Personally I enjoyed road racing much more than motocross, which was always for fun. I never really had a competitive edge and then once I got into road racing it was definitely for me. I just had a new kind of determination for it.
Your brothers [Michael and John] are both riders too. Is there any rivalry between the three of you?
There’s no rivalry at all. It is nice that it’s genuine unlike some other brothers, who are really competitive and they want to beat their brothers for some reason, but it’s never been that way for us because we always went racing with each other as a family since we were kids. I always thought people were joking when they asked that, but then I realised when I spotted other riders that are brothers that that is the case and they really do want to beat each other, but it’s something that we’ve never considered. We were brought up to support each other, so it’s probably something to do with how we were raised.
What do you think you'd be doing now if you hadn't got into riding?
My dad was an engineer, so I may have followed him into that line of work. It was around the time that I was leaving school that I was trying to decide and I went to college to get my National Diploma in Engineering, just because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I think that’s probably what I would have liked to have done, but as the years went on I developed an interest in journalism too, so that would have interested me.
When did you first realise that you could make a career out of riding?
I think it was around 2005. I considered it a few years before that, but until Red Bull picked me up in 2004 and I got involved with a fully professional team and with the support of Red Bull that I realised that this could be a big opportunity.
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There are several top riders coming through from County Antrim at the moment. What do you put that down to?
There might have been something in the water when we were all growing up because it’s just a small area where a lot of great riders come from. Within about a 30 mile radius of Belfast seems to be pretty strong. Johnny [Rea] and I both won all of the races in Assen a few weeks ago and we only live about 40 minutes apart. We knew each other as kids doing motocross, but we didn’t really hang out until we became team mates at Red Bull in 2004. We were team mates for three years and we got to know each other that way and became friends and we still see each other in the paddock.
What has been your biggest wipeout on a bike so far in your pro-career?
There was one that scared the shit out of me and that was my first huge crash, which was at the start of my second year of racing at Brands Hatch. I lost it in a very fast corner – I was pushing the front end of the bike too hard. I had never actually crashed with the front end of the bike letting go, it had always been the rear, so I didn’t exactly know the limit of the front. In one particular corner I kept riding round the outside of people and hitting this big bump but I was staying on board so I thought it was OK. With about five laps to go I had a huge crash and I went sliding on my back, but as I entered the gravel trap there was a bit of a lip so my ankles hit it and it wrecked all the ligaments in my ankles and I just remember being glad that I was still alive and able to move afterwards.
What's the next move for you in your riding career?
I want to make the next step. This will be my last year in Supersport. I want to win the championship before moving on and I think there are two options for me – either stepping up to World Superbikes or moving across to the MotoGP paddock in the new Moto2 category. Both are hopefully stepping stones to MotoGP, but whichever series I move to I want to be able to win on the bike – that’s the most important thing, so I’ll just have to weigh up the options in the two categories and whichever is the most competitive, that’ll be the one that I move to.
It’s been a long term goal of mine to compete in MotoGP and it’s very tough to get there now because there used to a host of privateer teams, but now politics plays a huge part in it, a bit like Formula 1, and your face has to fit and you have to be in the right place at the right time. It’s not always the case that the best rider gets there. It can be the case in World Superbikes that if you’re winning there, you can get the opportunity in MotoGP and also there’s less politics involved in World Superbikes.
Keep in touch with Eugene's progress at his official site and read his Twitter updates here.
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