He retired from full-time commentary after the final race of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, where he held his last post-race interview with multiple prominent riders at the time such as Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez.
When he discovered the Motorcycle speedway at the Oxford Stadium in Cowley and later visited Mallory Park with his father, where he saw and heard the six-cylinder Honda of Mike Hailwood for the first time, this interest was further sparked.
[8] When he returned a few days later, he met Tony Adamson who worked as a sports reporter for BBC Radio Oxford at the time.
[1][6][13] Harris' first private commentary was in 1974 when he called a North Gloucestershire club meeting over the phone from a sergeant's mess at a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire.
The video consists of multiple motorcycle racers like Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa Cal Crutchlow and Jack Miller reciting some of his classic lines, as well as former FIM president Vito Ippolito, other grand prix motorcycle riders and sports figures praising him for all his work as a commentator.
After the video ends, an emotional Harris returns to his seat to start the interview in a fun manner.
[15][2] Harris considers two moments during his commentary career as his best - the 2004 South African motorcycle Grand Prix where Valentino Rossi narrowly won his first-ever race for Yamaha against Max Biaggi and the 2003 South African motorcycle Grand Prix where Sete Gibernau narrowly won from Rossi after his teammate Daijiro Kato lost his life in an accident during the previous race.
[12][17] Harris revealed in his autobiography Never Say Never: The Inside Story of the Motorcycle World Championships that his club was in financial troubles in the final year of his work on the board of directors.
[2][18] Over the course of his grand prix motorcycle racing commentary history, Harris has attracted mixed and even polarising opinions on his particular style of uniquely enthusiastic commentating.
Some praise him for this as well as his overall passion, familiar expressions during the races and his decades of involvement in the sport which gave him great knowledge and understanding of grand prix motorcycle racing while others criticise him for his overusing of certain phrases, his use of cliché's, the mistakes he sometimes made and his early beginnings at Rothmans.
[4] Over the span of forty years, Harris has written numerous books related to grand prix motorcycle racing.
The second book is called Motocourse History of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Races 1907 - 1989, was released in 1990 and was also translated into German.
In 2018, he hinted in an interview with Fast Bikes India that he was writing a book about his life travelling the world in MotoGP and Formula One.
[7] His fifth and most recent book came out in 2019 with the title Never Say Never: The Inside Story of the Motorcycle World Championships, which is an autobiography of the life of Nick Harris.
Harris and his business worked on the media communications and public relations part when Rothmans joined the sport in 1994 in the form of photographs, video's and broadcasts as well a Formula One pre-season guide.
[23] Besides his work for Rothmans, Harris has also narrated multiple programmes, video's and advertisements for companies like Yamaha and Castrol, and has hosted presentations for Tissot, Honda.
He also revealed that, in 2003, he met the father of future motorcyclist Bradley Smith at a local pub in Oxford, who said his son wanted to get into grand prix motorcycle racing at the time.
[24] In an interview with the Golden Triangle Rider in 2017, Harris said that he suffers from tunnel vision and therefor does not ride his motorcycle anymore.