GSE Racing, the saga: from Bayliss to Hodgson to Camier, the privateer team that made the giants tremble

The scent of oil, pure ambition, and that quintessentially British knack for doing things on a grand scale starting from an engineering office. The story of the GSE Racing team is exactly that: an old-fashioned novel written on asphalt, where the courage of Darrell Healey and the intuition of Colin Wright transformed a private outfit into a true battleship capable of making the factory giants tremble.

It all began when the GSE brand, tied to the construction world, decided that building sites were no longer enough and that the real adrenaline was on the track. The spark ignited in the late nineties, in a British Superbike that was a lion’s den. This is where destiny brought them together with a young Australian panel beater who seemed to have nothing to lose: Troy Bayliss. With the Ducati 996 painted in INS sponsor colors, the team built a success steeped in legend, taking Troy to the top of the United Kingdom in 1999 and launching him toward that Olympus that would make him the myth we still revere today.

GSE Racing, however, wasn’t content to stay within the island’s borders. With the switch to the world stage, the squad became a Ducati “satellite” team that was satellite in name only.

2003 remains the golden year, a season etched into fans’ memories for the absolute dominance of Neil Hodgson. On that yellow-and-red HM Plant–branded Ducati 998, Hodgson won just about everything there was to win, gifting Healey the world title and proving to the world that a private structure, if managed with vision and discipline, could rule the global stage.

After saying goodbye to the world championship, the return to BSB wasn’t a retreat but a fresh display of strength. The years of the white and blue Airwaves liveries entered motorcycle racing iconography by right. These were the times of Gregorio Lavilla’s triumphs and Shane Byrne’s crystalline class, years when GSE’s Ducatis were the bikes to beat—the ones every rider dreamed of piloting. And yet, the most incredible twist came in 2009, when the team decided to break its historic bond with the Italian manufacturer and switch to Yamaha. Many cried sacrilege, but the facts proved Wright right: Leon Camier obliterated every previous record, winning the title with a superiority that almost embarrassed his rivals.

Then, as often happens in the best stories, silence. Without a sponsor to guarantee the standards of excellence they were accustomed to, management decided to close the garage doors in 2010. A painful choice but consistent with their philosophy: race to win, or don’t race at all.