Let's get straight to it boys and girls - as per my post from 27th February on my TFT social media channels, I have managed to join a team in British Superbike: Rapid Honda by Marvel Motorsport HCL (phew, what a mouthful!).
This was in fact the same team that I mentioned in "I'm Back (Part 6)" that I initially thought I was going to join as a paid member, and who then later advised that they wouldn't in fact be in a position to pay me.
Funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it?!
As I said previously, having snookered myself and losing my position at CDH Racing, I reached back out to Matt Bainbridge (Rapid Honda Team Owner) like a dog with its tail between its legs to convince him to take me on, even if just as a volunteer.
So a word of advice for those looking to get involved in this industry - sometimes your ego will take a battering. If you're a thin-skinned, sensitive type then either toughen up (quickly) or reconsider your career choice. When you're starting at the bottom and don't know anyone on the 'inside' who can fast-track you to a position, rejection will become common-place, so it's a case of learning how to stand back up and dust yourself off, each and every time you get knocked down.
Mandatory, 'Rocky' style, semi-inspirational speech over! :)
As of yesterday, and off the back of an online meeting with Matt, I now have access to Rapid Honda's Instagram and Facebook pages, and duly published my first post for the team - happy days!
Since the last blog, there's been another interesting development. My mate Chris Hicks, who up until last season sponsored CDH Racing as I previously mentioned, has now decided to go it alone and start his own race team - Xtra Mile Transport Racing!
And no guesses who Chris wants to head up his socials... :)
Again, unfortunately for me this is another unpaid role, although in fairness to Chris he'll have a load of initial expense as he gets his new baby off the ground in its formative year. For this season, he'll be running a single bike in a new support class in BSB - the Pirelli National Sportbike Championship, which is focussed exclusively on middle-weight, twin-cylinder sport bikes such as the Aprilia RS660 (the bike XMT Racing will be running), Yamaha YZF-R7, Suzuki GSX-8R, Kawasaki Ninja 650 and Honda Hornet 750.
He's also purchased a shiny new Yamaha YZF-R1 directly from Ten Kate Racing Products which will be used as a development mule throughout the season, so who knows what his plans are for that project...
Plus, 'Hixy' said he would sort Kağan and I out with complimentary weekend passes for this upcoming BSB season if we ran into any issues on that front, and who knows what role he may play again regarding helping the TR54 Fan Club secure accommodation for Donington WorldSBK in July...
Little by little, I feel like I'm getting to where I want to be. As I said previously, I've learnt how to manage expectations and not force things and one of the main reasons this has been so difficult to do is due to my father's ailing health.
Time to give you some personal insight into my life...
Since graduating back in the early noughties, I've worked alongside my dad in his business in its varying incarnations over the past 20 years. The one constant has been the dynamic between myself and my dad; he's old-school, unwavering in his now mostly outdated opinions and at times very difficult to communicate with.
He also has a brilliant mind; with over 60 years of advanced, down-to-component-level electronics expertise, he has forged a successful career fixing things like radios, CRT TVs, and satellite receivers, to name just a few. Even into his mid-70s, he has an unbelievably steady hand and regularly works on extremely delicate and complicated PCBs under a microscope.
I'm in awe of his skills and dedication to his craft.
In more recent times, his unique talents have been our main - scratch that, ONLY - source of income, as he is able to build and repair battery packs consisting of Lihium-ion cells (we specialise in battery packs that power ebikes), which are governed by electronics that very few in the ebike industry understand. In fact, most ebike retailers can't distinguish their positive from their negative and don't even know how to take a simple DC output voltage reading from a battery!
My dad expected my brother and I to be his clones; which is to say, extremely studious and keen technicians. Unfortunately for him, we turned out to be neither. I mean, I did fairly well with eight GCSEs, an Advanced GNVQ and a Batchelor's Degree, but I know deep down that I never fully applied myself at school or uni like I know I could, or indeed should have.
Because of this, my dad and I have a bit of an uneasy relationship. Don't get me wrong, we love each other dearly and providing we're talking about football and motorsport, we get along just fine. But I've not grown into the man that he perhaps wanted/expected - I don't have any unique skills that can earn me a living, and I know that that disappoints him on a profound level.
We work together Monday to Friday, so at times it can get quite fractious between us. In Turkish culture, respecting your elders is engrained into our upbringing and is of utmost importance; I can't be calling my dad profanities if I lose my cool, so it can get very trying when he's pushing my buttons and pissing me off (of course, he's allowed to call me every name under the sun lol!).
Unfortunately, due to his work ethic and neglecting his health in recent years, my dad now has Stage 4 prostate cancer and having recently stepped out of the NHS framework (he refused chemotherapy), as of the time of writing is currently in Northern Cyprus awaiting the first of his paid treatments, known as Lutetium 177.
Setting aside the emotional toll of seeing my dad's health deteriorate, I know that I'm becoming an increasing burden on him in the sense that he is working to prop ME up. In his condition. While I feel like he strong-armed me into joining him in the family business 20 years ago (and in the process foregoing any career I may have had otherwise), the truth is I could have stepped away and gone it alone at any time.
Instead, I got too comfortable and silly as it may sound I didn't realise that as the years rolled by, I was really being left behind by my friends and peers financially speaking. When you work for a small, family-run concern, your prospects of promotion and annual pay rises are well... pretty non-existent lol!
I'm not going to go into the innermost details of my situation, but it would be fair to say that there have definitely been some perks of working for the old man, I don't want to be all 'woe is me', and it was as a result of said perks that I was not been as pro-active as I should have in regards bettering myself and finding work elsewhere.
I do have a 'side-hustle' that subsidises my main wage, but it's not enough to support a family as a stand-alone income should my dad's health worsen and/or he just decides to call it a day.
I'm not writing this as a sympathy vote. Just that I want you, the reader, to understand my mindset and what drives me to succeed in this industry. It's a combination of factors - necessity, change in circumstances, change in mindset... and pride.
In the not-so-distant future, when someone asks me what I do, I want to be able to puff my chest out and proudly declare: "I work for *Insert team/manufacturer name* as their PR Manager."