Mr Nearly: Aaron Slight

“Idon’t like you and I don’t like the newspaper you represent. Keep out of my way from now on.”

It’s August 1996 and I’m stood in the sweltering pit-lane of the Sentul racetrack in Indonesia. Aaron Slight is jabbing his finger into my chest as he utters those words. He’s half my size but I’m scared. Scared because those dark, unblinking eyes are boring into my skull and the right hand and forearm that the jabbing finger is attached to are very heavily scarred, courtesy of an almost career-ending crash at Suzuka in 1990. He’s also got a brightly coloured Mohican haircut. On track or off, you really don’t mess with Slighty.

I’d written something in the weekly paper about a war of words between Aaron and his then-team mate Carl Fogarty. Honda didn’t like their two factory stars bickering and told them off. The pair of them then told me off! By the following round at Sugo, the normally friendly and affable Aaron was back and all was forgotten.

Now, we could harp on about Slighty being ‘the best rider never to have won a World Superbike title’, but that would do the man a disservice as there’s so much more to find out. Alongside the seven poles, 13 World Superbike race