SuperBike Magazine June 2020

41
Life can be full of cruel jokes. Last summer
Peter Hickman and his Smith’s Racing crew
finished prepping their BMW S1000RR superstock
bike in the paddock at the North West
200, two hours before practice got underway. This
year they had both the stocker and the superbike
ready to go by mid-March; ten weeks before 2020 TT
practice was due to start and just a few days before
the entire event was cancelled.
Hickman and team manager Darren Jones still
hope the Isle of Man government changes its mind
and allows a slimmed-down TT race programme
to take place during the Classic TT and Manx GP at
the end of August. But in case that doesn’t happen
they’re already making the most of the downtime.
“We’re taking the positives,” says Jones, who is
also Hickman’s crew chief. “We’ve got time to do
things for which we never had time before – like having
a proper test programme with all our TT bikes.”
Meanwhile Hickman stays sharp riding flat track
and minibikes, awaiting the start of the BSB and the
roads seasons, whenever that may be.
Smith’s Racing – now backed by Milwaukee tools
– is based in an industrial unit in Louth, Lincolnshire.
Jones is a local and Hickman lives in his motorhome
next to the unit. They both work full-time, employing
other staff for racing, development and so on. They
are lucky that team owners Alan and Rebecca Smith
– who run a Gloucestershire-based waste-management
company – allow them to run the team pretty
much as they like.
“Daz and I had been in other teams, but you won’t
achieve what you want to unless you’ve got the right
personnel, which most teams don’t,” adds Hickman.
“We’re lucky that Alan and Rebecca have allowed us
to mould their team into what we want it to be.”
Thirty-three-year-old Hickman and Jones have
worked together for a decade.
“Daz owned a bike shop, and in 2010 I went in there
begging; that’s how it started,” grins Hickman, who
during our chat is repaying favours by making coffee
for the entire crew.
“When I started working with Peter he wore all
my old clothes, he slept on my sofa and my missus
cooked us dinner every night,” recalls Jones. “And I
used to get used slicks from Pirelli for him to race.
Genuinely, he didn’t have a pot to piss in.”
The pair first hooked up with Smith’s in 2017, when
the team was close to quitting racing.