a brief Joey anecdote from former Honda team boss Neil Tuxworth:
"Joey never used many spares.I remember Carl Fogarty used to have a brand new clutch every race when he raced an RC30 with us. Joey used one clutch for three years!
Of all the riders I’ve worked with, Joey used the smallest number of parts of anyone and he never had many breakdowns either. I think that was simply down to his neat riding style and the fact he understood engines.
One time he rang up for some piston rings to rebuild one of his bikes. So the lads in the workshop thought, ‘if he’s doing a rebuild he’ll need a host of other bits.’ So we sent him a big package of parts, pistons as well as rings, gaskets, lots of bushes, seals, that kind of stuff you need for an engine rebuild.
A week later this package comes back virtually untouched apart from the rings, with a note in it from Joey. It read: “I only wanted f***ing piston rings.” To this day I can’t believe any racer would be honest enough to send back any parts he didn’t need."