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Juzar Motiwala may have made a clean sweep of the UAE Stock Bike Championships but he won’t be celebrating his victory with his parents — he hasn’t found a way to tell them he even races motorbikes yet.
The 35-year-old reaches speeds of 260 kmph on the track, but his courage fails when it comes to admitting to his parents back in India that he is involved in the hair-raising sport.
“It’s not that I don’t want them to know, it’s just that I don’t want them to worry,” said Motiwala, who finished the season with 378 points — almost 100 more than his Honda team-mate, the second-placed Jason Burnside.
“They wouldn’t say that I couldn’t do it, but they would be concerned because I’m married and I’m a father and it’s a high-risk sport.”
Luckily for Motiwala, his wife, Zein and daughter Aiman, 3, are his biggest fans. “They give me the best support,” he said. “I obviously couldn’t do it if they weren’t supporting me.”
Motiwala, who claimed 15 out of 16 podium finishes, came to stock racing quite late in life, but motorbikes have been his passion forever.
“I have been in Dubai for 16 years and we always had a small group who just rode in the streets,” he explained. “We never raced back then, but we loved riding.”
But Motiwala’s fledgling riding career nearly faltered before it started. A close friend, Peter Jensen, died in a traffic accident while on a bike and Motiwala and the other riders decided that it was too dangerous to continue riding on Dubai’s roads.
“We just stopped four years ago,” he explained. “But then the Autodrome opened up and that offered us a safe place to ride our bikes free from other traffic.”
And it was while on a track day at Dubai Autodrome that Motiwala was spotted by Honda. With the manufacturer behind him, Motiwala was able to fulfil his dream of racing motorbikes. A participant in the eight meets of the Stock and Super Stock Championships, Motiwala has proved his talent on the bike.
“We are very pleased with this bike,” said Honda’s Robert Klugman. “It just works. We have been very pleased with how Motiwala and the bike have performed.”
And so as Motiwala, a jeweller by trade, heads for next season’s opening meet in October, he also contemplates ways to gently break news of his double life to his parents. He admits though, that his father might have his suspicions.
“He was here in Dubai for a visit and he saw all these trophies that I have at home,” recalled Motiwala. “He asked what they were and I made some stupid excuse, but he knows that something is cooking. I think he’s decided not to ask me questions that he doesn’t want the answers to.”
Motiwala is not the only Honda-man on the track. Second-placed finisher in the championship, Burnside, also benefits from a partnership with the manufacturer.
Burnside, who practices in the desert as well as on the track, said that any type of training on the bike was good.
“I don’t do desert racing, but we ride whenever we can. There aren’t that many track days when we can do testing so we just have to get out on the bike whenever we can.”
And off-road racing might be something that both Motiwala and Burnside can look forward to.
“We are really busy at Honda at the moment and support all types of riding, and it could be a possibility that they branch out into rallying.”
Let’s hope that Motiwala has told his clueless mum and dad before he does that.
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