Favorite Book of The Year – Hodgson’s Back on Track

With the year quickly coming to a close there’s a certain amount of self-reflection hanging in the air. That quasi-introspective light that reveals both the magnificent and the less then stellar, the things you admire and the thing you’d like to alter when next season comes.

Clearly this hasn’t been the best year for my personal riding because I just haven’t had enough time to actually do it and I’ve spent far more hours away from the bikes than near them. On one level that eats away – rather constantly – at my sense of ‘what’s right in the world’, however the desire to be ‘near’ bikes has shown itself in a variety of different forms. Some of which are relatively obvious – like the hours spent working on moto-docs, while others were surprisingly unexpected.

In particular the vast amount of moto-reading that I found myself consuming over the course of the past year. Some of these escapes where brand specific while others era specific, and a few were merely tangentially moto-related, yet of all the books I flew through this year none was nearly as illuminating as Back on Track, a biography/memoir/journal of Neil Hodgson’s 2000-2001 season racing in the World Superbike Championship.

Generally speaking I’m always somewhat hesitant to pick up a biography written with or by the subject themselves, as often times these sorts of books are crafted in the glowing light of perfection and rarely shed insight into the person themselves. Instead these sort of ‘tell all’ experiences feels less like the truth and more like you’re reading what is essentially one very hefty Nike commercial that’s sole purpose is to help stir the subjects celebrity status. However Back on Track is remarkably different than other puff-piece Bios — Because it isn’t one.

The book was not written during a Championship season, nor does it paint a perfect picture of Neil or pretend that he is in fact a perfect person. Instead Back on Track offers the most candid look that I’ve ever read on what it takes to run among the big boys in WSBK. From the highs to the lows to the constant search for that little bit of extra speed in every corner, Hodgson and co-writer Neil Bramwell lay it all out there for the audience to relive and learn from.

Perusing the pages you get the sense that the actual act of racing is almost the easiest part of being a professional World Superbike rider. Rather it’s the constant movement and motion from one place to another and the assortment of issues that go along with living a vagabond existence that seems to be the most trying part of professional racing.

In addition to the absolute sense of honesty that the book portrays, Back On Track is surprisingly open about what works and what doesn’t when you’re racing. Considering that at the World Superbike level of racing it is truly everyman for themselves and an arena where success is often predicated on secrecy, it truly astonishing that Neil is as open about what goes on in the pits and how that ultimately affects his outcomes during a race. He and his team spend the year constantly plagued with parts that don’t work, bikes that blow up, a lack of factory support and a somewhat elusive search for better results. The way that they go about sorting these issues out is really the core of the book and the journey from the first race of the season to the last offers a surprising amount of knowledge that applicable not only on the track but in the everyday real world when you’re not even around a bike…