‘We're not just nutters on a death wish': The riders taking on the Isle of Man TT

Telegraph

7 days ago

Isle of Man TT lap record holder Peter Hickman always puts his left leg into his racing leathers first, followed by his right leg. Then he slides on his left boot followed by the right. John McGuinness MBE, 23 times a TT winner, makes a point of mowing his lawn prior to the event and puts a penny in his leathers before every race.
'We're not just nutters on a death wish,' says McGuinness. 'There's a lot of development that has come out of the Isle of Man TT that goes into road bikes, tyres and technology and fuels.'
But that is not to say riders aren't aware that the TT is dangerous. Even non-superstitious riders, ordinarily rational men in other areas of their lives, have rituals before a TT race. And especially for accomplished riders such as McGuinness and Hickman, there is a stark awareness that the 37 and three quarter-mile TT course can bite back. This is, after all, a race that takes place on normal public roads, with the necessary accompanying bus shelters, kerb stones, gable ends, telephone boxes, stone walls, primary schools, mature trees, crowded pubs and pre-war semis.
Then there is the Manx weather – a micro-climate that can bring, simultaneously, blazing sunshine to one section of the course and torrential rain to another. And that's without the livestock and wildlife getting involved. Cows, horses, sheep, poultry and gulls have all been known to grace the course during races.
And it gets stranger: in 2022 a stray football rolled down the ultra-fast St Ninian's section as McGuinness (aka the Morecambe Missile) howled towards the daunting descent of Bray Hill; in 2019 a practice session was delayed because a man at a bend called the Black Dub was wielding an axe at the marshals; and in the mid-1990s, during a race, a truck was backed onto the circuit from a driveway. The driver happened to be the island's Minister of Transport at the time.
All part of the appeal
And this – yes, even the axeman – is all part of the TT's charm; and it's been this way since the inaugural race in 1907, when Charlie Collier won the single-cylinder class on a Matchless in a time of 4.08.08 hours, at an average lap speed of 38.21mph. Hickman's lap record of 136.358mph is staggering considering a lap involves a number of 20mph hairpins, stretches of road 2,000 feet above sea level and speeds on the longer straights of more than 200mph, as well as around 167 gearchanges.
Setting up a machine for the TT is complicated. The Honda team has been preparing Dean Harrison's TT bikes since the start of the year, with two dedicated mechanics on the job. 'You've got to make compromises on the set-up,' says Harrison, from Bradford. 'You can't stop it bottoming out at the bottom of Bray Hill [a dramatic dip after a 190mph plunge] because the suspension would then be too hard everywhere else.'
Leading contenders
And the pressure is on to go faster still, certainly for the top contenders at this year's TT. All eyes are on 14-times TT winner Hickman and fellow factory BMW rider Davey Todd (who won his first TT last year), three-times TT winner Dean Harrison (factory Honda) and Ulsterman Michael Dunlop (BMW), the most successful TT racer of all time with 29 wins and current torch-bearer of the Dunlop road racing dynasty.
There is fresh talent, too. Kiwi newcomer Mitch Rees is tipped to do well and, backed by the Padgett's Milenco team, has the technical know-how behind him to make the grade, Padgett's having put riders on the TT rostrum for six decades.
The pressure is uncomfortably intense for Hickman, not least from his team-mate Todd, from North Yorkshire. Hickman, from Lincolnshire, won the Superbike race last year but the Senior – the prestige event of the week – went to Todd after Hickman crashed at the Ginger Hall pub, which was packed with boozing spectators.
Risk factors
'Everyone thinks I pushed too hard but I had actually eased off after gaining six seconds on Davey in one sector, which was a massive chunk and I took a lot of risk,' says Hickman. 'There's only so much risk you'll ever get away with so I rolled off a bit earlier into Ginger Hall; I didn't load the front tyre to give it the grip it needed and I slid away.' Hickman walked away from the crash with no more than dusty leathers.
Of his team-mate, Todd, being his chief rival, Hickman says: 'Of course I want to beat Davey but at the end of the day if he wins it's still good for the team, so it's all good.'
Todd and Hickman are very different riders. Todd is frantic; Hickman is relaxed and smooth. Indeed, Hickman's heart rate at the end of the first Superbike practice session at this year's TT was 90 beats per minute (bpm) – a pulse rate on a par with, or even slightly below, that of anyone else washing the car or running a bath.
Even an experienced campaigner like McGuinness is hesitant to place a bet on this year's winner. 'They're all strong, with very different riding styles,' he says. 'I've been watching the onboard videos of Davey [Todd] and Dean [Harrison] and they are impressive. I'm now learning off them and it's interesting to see the different riding styles. There are some corners Dean takes at least a gear higher than I would; Michael is smooth, like a typical road racer, and Todd rides like a short circuit racer.' McGuinness means Todd's riding style is uncommonly aggressive for the bumpy, off-camber public-roads TT course.
200mph – and more
'The racing is changing all the time. Even in my TT career, since the 1990s, speeds through Sulby Straight – where the speed trap is – have increased from 180mph to 185mph, now the top boys are going through there at 200mph. People say 'The bikes are too fast' but they said that when Bob McIntyre broke the 100mph [average speed] record in 1957 on his Gilera.'
In fact, the first complaint that the bikes at the TT were too fast for the circuit were made in the press in 1911.
Speeds at the TT are still rising but nothing like at the rate of the dramatic increases that took place in the 1920s and 1930s, partly due to improved road surfaces. In 1920 the lap record was 55.62mph (Tommy de la Hay, riding a Sunbeam); by 1938 this had soared to 91mph, set by Harold Daniell on his factory Norton. And Daniell, famously, in bottle-end glasses, was rejected for military service in the Second World War because his eyesight was so poor.
Top riders still learning
As for the course itself, McGuinness says: 'You can never fully 'know' this place; I'm still learning. We make hundreds of thousands of decisions on each lap in order to line up each corner. The variety of conditions across the course is insane and then there's the strobing – where the sun comes through the trees and blinds you for a split second.
'There is nothing like this place. Nothing can prepare you for staring down Glencrutchery Road [the A2, a main road through Douglas that is also the start/finish straight, brushing the walls of the island's main cemetery] when you're waiting to set off. Nothing compares to the start of the TT and the sense of apprehension. When I watch the newcomers on the grid I can see the fear in their eyes.'
Riders at the TT set off one at a time at 10-second intervals, a necessary feature of a race on narrow roads. It is therefore not so much a race between competitors together on the road but against the clock. When a rider reaches the starting grid the chief start line marshal places his hand on the rider's shoulder and releases it when it's time to go.
McGuinness says: 'When they get hold of you that's the worst, but as soon as his hand is lifted the pressure is off. That's why I love it when people talk nonsense in my ear on the grid to distract me up until that point.'
Absolute concentration is critical during a TT race: a split-second lapse can result in a fatal crash. Harrison thinks of 'nothing else', other than what is in front of him, as does Hickman. But McGuinness, perhaps due to his long experience, sometimes allows his mind to wander. 'When you get to Kirk Michael village there's normally someone having a barbecue so you can smell sausages and burgers and you think, bloody hell, I wish I was having that.'