Tiny's team!
By TMX Archives on 8th Apr 04
'TINY' TIM Chambers is a large and genial man who has that indefinable quality called 'presence'. 'TINY' TIM Chambers is a large and genial man who has that indefinable quality called 'presence'. I call him Tiny to his face because I'm fairly large too and can get away with it - but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone else. Knowing him, though, it's not a problem as he's an all-round nice bloke who loves big thumpers almost as much as he loves his family.Now, for 2004, he's now got to live with high-revving, screaming little two-strokes as well. But no doubt the man will soon love them too and make a success of it along the way. So what about this expanding - and expansive team?There's no doubt it's a high-profile team for 2004 with Mark Hucklebridge, Christian Burnham and Wayne Smith in the GPs, the British championships and other major events plus Shaun Simpson and Jason Garrad competing in every big meeting this side of the Channel. Then there's Chris and Carl Lillywhite and Trevor Shepherd - long-time friends of Tim - who are also riding under the Chambers KTM banner. All-in-all that's a lot of bikes and spares.And because of Tim's friendly demeanour, there are also strong links with the Phoneparts KTM team and 'secret weapon' Mark Jones. They swop information and practice together and the day I went to meet them at Matchams Park, defending British enduro champion David Knight was with them too. Dave, due to the nature of the sport he competes in, is very much his own man but he was enjoying the atmosphere and the friendship on offer.Right now Tim Chambers and his team are very much the men of the moment - especially after Hucklebridge's double win at the British championship opener at Canada Heights - but you don't gain expertise and experience overnight and Tim started out with bikes back in 1978 so he's been around a bit.It still makes me smile but back then Tim had a butcher friend who owned a CCM - but even that wasn't enough to put the lad off so the butcher and Eric Deeley, the South Midland Centre ace with another CCM, took him along to meetings. Pushing Eric's bike up to the startline wasn't enough so our man bought a '77 CCM for himself and he was on his way.I would like to say it was to be an uninterrupted love affair with bikes for the next 26 years but in no time at all Tim discovered girls or, to be more precise, Valerie - the mother of his three children to follow. To be fair to the man though, this was only a hiccup as he was back in 1983 with the American-built KSI Honda bought from cable man Chris Ventress which was to be replaced by an Armstrong for the '84 season after selling the Honda-engined special to Ken Hanson.The Armstrong proved to be another learning curve for Tim and he entered the Haynes series and the bigger South Midland Centre events. In an unhappy incident at Milton Keynes, the handlebars and the swingarm pin broke and then in the last race the motor seized. But with a new CCM three-speeder from Ken Covell he was soon back in the swing of things.While most get into motocross as a result of their parents, it was the other way round in the Chambers household. "My dad Alan saw what fun I was having and how great the lads were so he started racing at the ripe old age of 45," grins Tim, "and then my brother Nick started too. We were having a great time and then Judy, my mum, started keeping a tally of how much Nick and I were spending. Trust your mother to find you out - she reckoned the pair of us spent 10,500 on bikes and bits in the course of a single season."Money was not the problem for the Chambers family but they were combining racing with running a busy and successful business so Tim decided to hang up his helmet at the end of 1988. And instead of racing he started running riders and teams - and that's not expensive at all, is it mum?After using Yamaha for his team riders in 2001, Tim approached KTM UK's Kevin Burk at the NEC Show to sound out the possibility of going orange. Craig Pratley had won the four-stroke championship and finished eighth in the British for Tim on Yamaha, then tried a 520 KTM and thought it was fantastic. So a deal was clinched with Kevin on the KTM stand on the day.There's no doubt this is an arrangement that works. Kevin, himself a former schoolboy racer, is motocross mad and he and Tim enjoy a special rapport both on and off the track.The Chambers team bikes are now prepared at the KTM UK base in Brackley, Northants - an arrangement that many other teams can only dream about. But Tim's hardly struggling for garage space - Chambers Engineering is the Seddon Atkinson distributors for the South East and build, mend and make anything and everything connected with commercial vehicles, including the supply of the chassis and technical components for race transporters.To run a business and a manufacturer's team requires a massive amount of time and effort and Tim needs the full support of his family - luckily, he's got that in massive amounts. Valerie, sons Craig and Carl and daughter Elaine are all enthusiastic and involved, with Craig being the official PR man. "We're out to win but we're enjoying it as a family and as a team," reckons Tim. "You should never lose sight of the fact that racing bikes is fun. It might be expensive but it's fun - and I'll only ever support British riders and that's all part of the fun too."Tim has tremendous respect for the foreign talent and is in awe of the of the top men but when it comes to the British championships and the big domestic meetings he sees every foreign rider as taking the place of a Brit. He questions the wisdom of drafting in foreign riders just to get results. "How else are our young riders ever going to do well in the GPs if they don't get to ride in our championships?"Since he packed in riding and before his current crop of talent came along, Tim retained the services of many well-known and talented British riders, including Ken Hanson from 1985 to '88 and former British four-stroke champ Perry Leask. He also sponsored Phil Mercer in '96 and bought him a new Husaberg in '98 to go GP racing.Tim's a great one for nostalgia too and in 2002 lent Ken and Greg Hanson a pair of twin-shocks for a day. "They crashed a lot but they were first and second and they laughed all day. It was bloody marvellous."By Pete Plummer