Our good friend, Roddy Brooks, famous as the DBR editor in the UK for many, many years was kind enough to send us this cool interview with British GP and MXoN legendary promoter, Steve Dixon. Sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy a chat with one of the most important men in the history of motocross in England.

Steve Dixon - By Roddy Brooks for The Leather Exchange Motocross

If you have a spare million pounds and love motocross perhaps you could be a future Motocross of Nations promoter. A figure well over £1m was what current British GP boss Steve Dixon revealed it cost to stage international team showpiece at Matterley Basin last October.

To stage a GP at the Hampshire circuit costs well over £500,000, with all of the health and safety conscious regulations only piling further costs on an already expensive hobby. But don’t get any ideas that Dixon – owner of his own GP race team and veteran organiser of 14 British GPs and three MXoN spectaculars – is ready to throw in the towel just yet.

Let’s just say it’s in his blood as the only motivation Dixon can find is that without him there would be nobody else, and that his late dad told him to go for it when he first mooted the idea way back in 2005.

Dixon’s first foray was at the historic Matchams Park circuit before jumping headfirst into both a GP and MXoN at Matterley the following year. A run of Matterley GPs between 2011 and 2016 was followed by the Nations returning to Hampshire in 2017.

Six more GPs followed between 2018 and 2023 and then last year the Nations came back for a third instalment under Dixon’s guidance. MX mad British fans will be back in Hampshire in June for Dixon’s 15th British GP as a promoter but looking back to that first race in 2005 he struggles to find a reason why.

With the iconic Foxhill circuit seeing successive races cancelled and the Gore Basin venue at Arreton on the Isle of Wight having a two-year run the event needed some direction if it was going to stay on the world championship calendar. Dixon’s initial incentive to take over came from his need as a team manager to provide a race for his valued sponsors to see the riders they backed in action.

Dixon explained: “The British GP used to bring us all our sponsorship. We only needed to take our sponsors to the British GP, and they were happy. I used to have 300 guests at Foxhill, I used to have a big tent there with our sponsors.”

Faced with the prospect of no home race in 2005, Dixon did a deal with Matchams.

“Also, that year Mark Chamberlain ran at Isle of Wight, so we had two GPs which was even better. There were issues for Isle of Wight, and they got closed down.

“We still needed a home GP, and I also got offered the Nations for 2006. I spoke to Farleigh because I thought it would be great to run at Farleigh – fantastic track, great atmosphere. We went and had all the meetings at Farleigh, then we went to Ernee for the Motocross des Nations and saw how many people went there and thought ‘oh my god, this is going to kill off Farleigh’. At Farleigh they didn’t have the fields they used to have back in the heyday and all the trucks going into Farleigh, we might run it one year, but it would close the circuit down. It would have caused too much chaos and then I would be the bad man of motocross because Farleigh’s been lost.

“Then I was trying to find a venue and sort of thought about Foxhill but the ultimate reason it stopped doing GPs was because, two cancellations in a row, when it gets bad it’s bad in the paddock. I loved the atmosphere, that’s where we won our first GP there.

“As an event that has to go ahead and not be cancelled, I needed to search. In my mind I knew that to have a venue it needs to be really good sand or chalk which drains. I’m from Winchester and I saw where they have the festival there (Matterley) and that’s how I started, I approached to see if I could run the motocross there.

“I never set up to run a GP, it was never in my dreams. Without a GP it meant we would probably lose the interest of sponsors and not be able to run the team. They sort of went hand in hand.

“At one stage the ACU said they would own it if I ran it, and I said OK. That was the old chairman, they said they would pay for it. After a couple of months, I had to go back to Youthstream and say the ACU couldn’t run it because it wouldn’t be fair on the members – as in the trials riders, road racers and enduro riders – to put their money into running a grand prix.

“Guiseppe (Luongo) said to me ‘let’s go for a partnership because we need to keep the British Grand Prix going because that’s where motocross started and it’s an important country regarding motocross’.

“That’s how I really started out and I honestly don’t know why I do it. It’s not a money maker that’s for sure. That’s not because of Infront, that’s because the level of authorities in and around Winchester. Maybe if I went somewhere else it would be a little bit easier, but not in the long run because, ultimately, running a safe event and health and safety and all that is paramount. I don’t want to be in a coroner’s office because I’d tried to cut corners. Everyone going to an event deserves to be safe although the camp sites are sometimes rowdy.”

Dixon knows he owes plenty to the dedicated team of people who come together once a year to share the burden of staging a motocross race.

“It is really hard work and everyone in the team, it’s really expensive. It is becoming harder. Gone are the days of getting people to work for free, just helping out, stuff like that. Until it sort of stops, I guess it’s my duty to deliver it.

“I’m like the super sub, I will run it in February, March, October, May, June or whatever. We’re doing it for the sport. It’s not a cash cow thing that I have to run it. It takes a lot of time and it’s getting harder and harder just through all the rules and regulations.

“In 2022 when we had the high winds the council said to me, we will hold you responsible for any deaths if you do run. We had to cancel it and run it the following week. Running it, the following week was probably one of the hardest things ever because you’re basically organising a grand prix in a week because all the doctors, the medical, the security, none of them could work the following week. That didn’t even come into the discussion or the thoughts. It was right up until the Thursday night that I was ringing around trying to get doctors and the prices went astronomical and that was really tough. We did it. We’ve survived all sorts of floods and storms and everything but that still never answers why I do it.”

Faced with the scenario of high winds resulting in serious injury or possibly the death of a spectator in 2022 Dixon knew he only had one option.

“The wind was blowing away the hoardings and we didn’t let the campers in, and we were hoping the wind would die down.

“Matterley has its own micro weather system, and we were leaving it until the last minute to see if we could run. We were used to wind and stuff like that abroad. You never want to cancel an event unless you have to.

“The track would have been fine, but it was dangerous and so the decision was that we had to cancel. The emergency planning committee got together at 10 o’clock at night which is environmental health, police, Winchester City Council and they delivered me an ultimatum: If I ran and put people’s safety at risk then I stood a chance of being in prison if the worst had happened.”

Dixon is happy to answer questions from fans on social media and face to face at the race and that is when one thing shines through.

“I’m a grass roots motcrosser and I have a team, and I’m connected with lots of people that still ride. Because I don’t have anything to hide then I would welcome anyone to come down here and work for a week and see what goes on and see what goes out.

“What I have learned is that you have to price accordingly to what the event costs. In the last eight years all services like security, wages have doubled, everything has over doubled. Fuel – used to be red diesel at 38p per lite, now you’ve got to use white and it’s 1:48. They’re big numbers when you’re using tens of thousands of litres of diesel. Everything is really expensive. The people you have to get in – your traffic managers and your health and safety people.”

Experience has taught Dixon that many other organisers of smaller events could find themselves under the same sort of scrutiny that he is.

“If clubs had to adhere to the real rules and regulations of running an event it would close a lot down, as it is closing a lot of (music) festivals down.”

Dixon is so experienced at running world class motocross races that he takes a step back during race weekend.

“At the event I’m basically removed, I don’t have a job. I stand back and then you’ve got all the managers in place. All the people with the paperwork, whether it’s health and safety officers, traffic people – they’re all accredited and registered, same with all the medical people and stuff like that.

“You can’t cut any corners. I just have to make sure all of that is in place. I’m like a general where I’m sort of overlooking but not involved. I have to deliver, between all the managers and the event controller, Infront and the ACU, I have to deliver to the council a yes or no, if it’s too dangerous and we have to cancel.

“I try to use my expertise in making sure all the facilities for the teams are there and that they’re all happy. Even that’s awkward because in Great Britain we have really strict rules on generators, like the level of safety when they trip. It’s different from abroad and so when you get a lot of vans they trip the electricity. People think it’s the supply but it’s not it’s the level of milliamps you have to protect people from.

“Roadworks here are over the top and when you go abroad there’s like one barrier and someone working but the number of deaths and casualties in the UK is far lower than other places. We can’t get around that.

“People are expecting to go to the event and go back home again. You’re never going to factor out stupidity and people getting wild but that can happen anywhere, but you just try to be on top of it. It’s the same with pit bikes, people think I’m a spoilsport by not allowing them to go on pit bikes on the campsites but if that pit bike hits a stone and skids if you’ve got a young child there it doesn’t bear thinking about. Back in the day I didn’t think of standing on a bulldozer watching or standing on top of a cabin and watching but now I realise you can’t do it because it’s dangerous. You do become a bit health and safety conscious.”

Dixon has learned some valuable lessons since he began his promotion journey in the mid-2000s and knows how hard it is to strike a balance between keeping his customers happy, fellow team owners and riders on side and the authorities, both local and international, satisfied that he has met their ever increasing criteria just to be able to open the gates come race weekend. He also has a word of caution for his fellow promoters.

“You know you’re going to lose a load of money if you cancel. If you try to get insurance to cover everything you have to pay 30-40% of what it costs to run anyway then there wouldn’t be like 5% left over from the running costs. If you paid out 40% you would be going bankrupt anyway. We have to pay for all the ACU stewards and everything, we don’t get anything for free. Each cost is getting more and more. Events are coming under a lot more scrutiny than they did before and a lot more events are closing. It won’t be long before some of the other major motocross events in the UK come under the same sort of scrutiny.”

Despite all of the pitfalls Dixon thinks he has been lucky with what he has seen at races, even if the police did describe the Saturday night scene at the campsite at the Nations in October as looking like a scene from a Mad Max film.

“We’ve been fairly lucky. It’s just general behaviour. If I think back to when I was a kid or a teenager, putting bangers in people’s letterboxes and stuff like that you don’t think about it when you’re young. You have to think about it and how people are acting. They are generally pretty good and even if they’re on mopeds bombing around and stuff like that they do try to stop because they’ve all come there with families.

“I have noticed in the last year there’s so much more cannisters and stuff from the gases that they inhale to get high. If I think back to school lots of people did glue sniffing. It’s trying to be in touch with what’s going on. We don’t have a drug problem there or anything. The only people that have caused havoc have been British championship riders that have got drunk but that’s probably because they don’t drink all year. It used to be the same at Weston Beach Race in the nightclub when everyone used to go. I understand all that. The people coming into the event think the motocross lot are an unruly bunch. But it only takes a few to ruin it.

“For me it was not a patch on Ernee or something like that. Or what used to be the German GPs in the beer tents.

"I’m not allowed to use that in the SAG (Safety Advisory Group) meetings, I’m not allowed to refer to abroad. I explain it’s the culture, but I’m not allowed to use that as an excuse. In the UK you’re not allowed flares at football grounds but at Wembley at the European Championship in ’24 it was two European teams and there was a whole side of flares.

“I feel I am a bit of a battering ram with the authorities and sometimes I think that’s unfair, but it is what it is. I have broad shoulders. I’m not blasé about it but they sometimes struggle to see my way of thinking, but we have always found middle ground and we have run 16-plus races without any major issues.

“We’ve been tasked with lots of weather problems and stuff like that and ultimately it is a motocross (race) in a field, it’s not Glastonbury. Sure, we want everything to run as good as possible and we put all the best plans in place. If people decide to cut across central reservations, then I can’t stop that. It happens all the time – people’s stupidity in driving and getting agitated. So, you’re dealing with a lot of different types of characters and that’s hard. I welcome anyone to come and help or come and witness what it’s like or come and stand next to me in front of the police and see the real side of it.”

Come rain or shine in June Dixon hopes the British fans join him in a field in Hampshire.

“Just book up your camping and come along and watch the great racing. If we lose it, does it matter to me? I have my team and I’m doing motocross every single day. I enjoy doing the GP. If someone ran it commercially, they would go hang on, you need a brain removing to do this. It doesn’t stack up.

“It’s like anything, like the garden fete, or whatever, it’s a certain amount of people prepared to put in time to keep things going, and once it’s gone it’s gone. To watch the top riders, I see them all the time, it’s amazing. We’ve got to carry on or we lose it like they did with World Rally and stuff like that.

“If people don’t come and it isn’t viable to do it that would make my life a lot easier, I guess. But that’s not what I want. When my dad died in 2009, when we didn’t do Matterley for five years after the Nations he said to me ‘you’ll get Matterley back one day’ and I guess that also drives me. I don’t mind admitting some years I get emotional, and I cry because of my dad because he helped build it.”