Joe Toner isn’t about to hang up his leathers just yet it seems when he told me recently that he’d applied for his 2013 Scottish Auto Cycle Union licence when he returns home from working in the USA next year.
For someone who started way back in 1981 when he scooped up dozens of race wins and a hard won Scottish Production Championship title as well as the British Endurance Championship, Toner (now 54) from Stirlingshire still has this strong desire to race.
“I started on a 500cc Kawasaki Triple but I kept on crashing it as the exhausts kept on digging in at corners. I quickly realised that the Yamaha LC was the bike to have and swapped it for one.
“I did get help from Scottish Champion Donnie McLeod when the bike failed scrutineering as I hadn’t drilled holes in things so they could be wired up. I was that green way back then,” he laughs.
“In that first year I raced with Niall Mackenzie (who also started in 1981) who travelled with Alistair and Stewart Rae while I would go to races in an old ambulance.”
In 1982 Joe was to make his mark often against his more famous adversary and friend Niall with a blanket regularly covering the pair of them after ten thrilling laps at either Knockhill or East Fortune. However it was 82 when he suffered his only major injury with a crash at the Ouston army base track north of Newcastle when a bike landed on top of him.
“I was going for third place but crashed fractured 5 vertebrae, broke my pelvis and punctured my kidneys,” explained Joe who ended up in Newcastle Royal Infirmary but took a turn for the worse when the hospital didn’t realise just how serious his internal injuries were initially.
After recovering Joe racked up win after win and was called, “ten in a row Toner in 83 on his way to the 500cc Streetbike Championship.
For 84 Joe controversially bought Chris Nairn’s RZ250 Yamaha which was a straight import from Japan much to consternation of the other riders. So much so that his bikes were sabotaged at Donington Park before an important Clubmans Championship race.
“I found small stones in the engine and air intakes so it was definitely sabotage,” he said ruefully.
Soon to move into the oil Industry, Joe found it impossible to continue at the same frequency of competition as his engineering career blossomed but that said he did compete a couple of times in the Isle of Man TT and the Manx Grand Prix with two top ten finishes in the latter the highlights.
He even acted as mechanic for fellow Scot Brian Morrison at the TT. “I think I probably cost Brian a TT win,” revealed Joe. “I just didn’t put in enough fuel so he could do that final lap against Steve Hislop. I thought I’d added enough but he ran out a few miles from home.”
“Lately I’ve been racing at tracks near to my home in Houston Texas. The most amazing thing I have done though was this year’s Pikes Peak hill climb which goes up to 14,000 feet from the start at 9,000 feet,” enthused Joe when I met him at the Haymarket Bar in Edinburgh.
Joe did reveal though that he raced for many years without realising that he needed glasses for short sightedness.
“Things were weird – everything was blurry and I eventually had laser eye treatment and now only need reading glasses,” he said laughing at the thought.
Ronnie Weir (c) 2012
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Memory added on November 26, 2012
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