One of the good things about the TT is that you can get a lot closer to the riders. Certainly, while they are racing (where else but the Isle of Man could you sit six feet from a bike flashing past at 160mph?) but also when they are off their bikes.
Unlike other sportsmen at the top of their game (or even other branches of motorcycle sport) road racers seem to remain “one of us” - accessible and getting on with their job.
It must be hard at times to do that; when you’re in your pit garage trying to discuss a millimetre adjustment to the rake of the front forks and 20 people are leaning over the rail saying “that’s Guy Martin, get a picture, Guy, Guy give us a picture ... and one with the wife.”
As they line up ready to go to the start line, a microphone gets shoved under their chin-strap and they’re asked for a comment. Five minutes later, they’ll be tearing down Bray Hill at 160mph, but now they’re being asked for their views on subjects ranging from their chances today, how well a competitor is riding, will their bike break down again or how dangerous are the damp patches under the conker trees.
Guy Martin deals with this intrusion into his concentration in his own way. Last year, he embarked on a risque joke, then befuddled the commentator by telling him he wanted a spatchcock for his dinner and did he know where you could get one. The interviewer had taken a while to catch on, but was better prepared this year when Martin said his jiggle pin had dropped out in practice.
Martin might have a bit of fun, but there’s tension in his voice. John McGuinness sounds as relaxed as if he’s standing in the pub discussing the race over a pint of lager.
Guy Martin gathers the crowds wherever he goes. His amazing crash in 2010 was captured in the film TT: Closer to the Edge and his quirky ways (borderline autistic) have endeared him to people. We spotted him a couple of times this year even though he was keeping a slightly lower profile. He was at the Villa Marina one evening to watch the Monster energy stunt show on the promenade, but was busy chatting to people rather than watching the show. I guess when you’ve ridden a lap of the TT course at 130mph that afternoon, a couple of French guys pulling wheelies and stoppies on trials bikes doesn’t seem that compelling.
We saw him again in the pits on Tuesday. He was in cut-off overalls covered in paint splashes and he’s been telling interviewers all week that he’s been earning a bit of extra money by doing some painting jobs. The story was that he’s actually been helping a mate redecorate, but whatever truth of the story, the overalls and paint were authentic.
We bumped into him (and a gathering crowd) as he rode an old Manx Norton back into the pit area. It was on the Norton stand along with a couple of their modern road bikes and I guess Guy had taken it up and down pit lane a couple of times (he wasn’t wearing a helmet). Everyone wanted a picture (including us - Tom took this one) and he accepted the attention as entirely normal, which it is, of course, for him.
The crowd followed his banging, popping Manx back to the Norton stand and then formed up three deep as he had a chat to some people from the team before slipping out of the back. Immediately, he’s trailed by a new pack of fans and we spot him again later in the morning in the Tyco Suzuki garage discussing something on his stripped down Supersport bike with the mechanics.
Not all the riders are easily recognised and not all of them are there to race. Jenny Tinmouth has been racing in British championship events on track for many years - 125cc, Supersport and Superbike. She’s also raced on the Isle of Man and in 2010 she beat Maria Costello’s record to become the fastest woman to lap the TT course at 119.945mph. How close to a 120mph lap is that!Jenny wasn’t racing this year, which is a shame, but we kept bumping into her in the crowd - a fan just like the rest of us. She was at a talk by John McGuinness and Ian Hutchinson at the Palace Hotel sitting a few rows behind us and would have paid for her ticket just like the rest of us. No-one was mobbing Jenny for autographs (her face isn’t as well known) which is a shame - the fastest woman around the TT course deserves a little more by way of tribute.
We saw her again the next day in the grandstand at Hillberry watching the Supersport and Superstock races. Tom had spotted her again and I joked that she was stalking him; he blushed (I think Tom has a soft spot for Miss Tinmouth). Next year, I hope she’s riding - someone must recognise the publicity value of taking a woman rider above 120mph - but if she’s not, perhaps she’ll be in the crowd because she loves motorcycles and motorcycle racing.
Another racer who has set TT records and who wasn’t riding this year was Ian Hutchinson, who held the Superstock lap record until Michael Dunlop’s incredible ride this year and who also, famously, won a record five TT races in one week in 2010. That’s one record Dunlop wasn’t able to match, although he came incredibly close and I thought he was going to do it after his win on Wednesday.
So Hutchinson’s achievement still stands as a unique record but, following that amazing TT, he was caught up in a crash in a British Supersport race at Silverstone. The crash wasn’t his fault and, as a number of riders went down like skittles, Hutchinson had a leg run over and really badly broken. It’s a quirk of life that you can ride hundreds of miles at crazy speeds on a track with no run-off, just hedges and brick walls and come through unscathed; and then you’re maimed in a wide gravel trap intended to make racing safer.
Since that accident, Hutchinson’s life has been transformed from glory and joy to pain and anguish. Almost three years later, after pins, bone grafts, skin grafts and bone stretching, Hutchinson is still wearing an exterior steel splint, but says he will be racing next year. If he is, it will be the most amazing, brave and determined comeback I have ever seen. I’d like to see him achieve that, but for now he’s an unwilling spectator and, unlike Jenny Tinmouth, he can’t melt into the crowd.
We saw Hutchy at a great talk at the Palace hotel, helped by Neil Hodgson and John McGuinness, telling stories about when he was working on David Jefferies’ team, Jefferies’ fatal crash, racing, crashing and general hooliganism. The day Jefferies died Hutchinson got drunk, then came to the casino at the Palace and won £250, which he posted through the door of the race office next day as entry for the Manx GP that year.
We heard about his first trip to the TT with a gang of biker mates from Yorkshire. He’d just arrived in Douglas, ridden off the ferry, pulled a wheelie, looped it and sent his bike crashing into a parked car. When he sat up, his mates were off their bikes, kicking his bike straight and pulling Hutchy to his feet. That’s one motorist with a valid claim if the story gets told too often.
Black humour ripples through the talk. McGuinness thinks it’s hilarious that Hutchinson crashes at the NW200 and demolishes a listed wall that stood for hundreds of years (it’s a shame he broke his pelvis); they’re both amazed and amused by the fact that a rider ran off the coast road in Antrim, over a cliff and ended up on the beach to be rescued by the coastguard; and both men have dark stories about hospitals. After his leg break, Hutchy overdoses on the morphine and sees monkeys in his room. It’s only when he complains to the nurse that one of them is sitting on the TV and will have it off the wall that she modifies his dose.
Neil Hodgson is at the opposite end of the scale to Guy Martin and Ian Hutchinson. He lives in the Isle of Man but has never competed in the TT. He’s a circuit racer and a former British and World Superbike champion, but he clearly loves the TT and has massive respect for the riders who take it on.
I first came across Hodgson riding WSB for Ducati, where he was unlucky enough to be Carl Fogarty’s team-mate. Foggy was never kind to team-mates and it wasn’t a happy season for Hodgson. He went on to Kawasaki the next year and was a top 10 runner, but never a winner. He resurrected his career in British Superbikes when he had some amazing rides, including a victory from the back of the grid at Oulton Park, and contributing to what was certainly the best BSB championship ever when he just got the better of Chris Walker, but only when Walker’s Suzuki blew up at Donington.
Hodgson is an Isle of Man tax exile not an Isle of Man racer, but world champion motorcycle racers remember their mates and he’s there to help out Hutchy, who future career might be more about talking than racing. Hodgson acts as compere and chat show host and he’s very comfortable in that role.
We did see Hodgson’s former team-mate, Carl Fogarty briefly - very briefly ... He was driving down the hill as Tom and I were toiling up on our bikes on the back road to Creg-ny-ba.
Josh Brookes was at the Isle of Man as a racer for the first time and he’d been setting a heck of a pace. His lap of 127.726mph was the best by any newcomer. If he sticks with it, he’ll be a winner, but it’s not clear right now whether he will come back. He made a number of honest and valid comments about this being the most scary thing he’s ever done on a bike. His presence was a boon for Tyco Suzuki; with Guy Martin off the pace and keeping a lower profile, most of the Suzuki PR was about Brookes’ brilliant form as a newcomer.
We’d seen Brookes on track and he did look good, but we encountered him in stranger circumstances. We took an open-top bus ride around the course on Tuesday and the bus turned out to be a bit of an old banger. It was pulled over because it was leaking diesel as we climbed the mountain section out of Ramsey and sat in the road with a puddle of fuel gathering behind it.
The road had been closed and we were milling about waiting to see if we’d be rescued or abandoned when a group of motocross riders came bucking and bouncing across the moor towards the road. They stopped to have a look and a quick fag and it was only after a minute or two that I realised one of them was Brookes. So that’s what TT riders do on a day off.
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| Josh Brookes is questioned by Manx Police - can I have your autograph? |
John Hopkins was another rider on the Isle of Man who was not racing. He’s been a works MotoGP rider, almost won the British Superbike Championship (like Chris Walker, he was robbed by the mechanical fragility of a Suzuki) and had a poor season in WSB on an uncompetitive bike before taking time out to get some injuries sorted. ‘Hopper’ was at the TT for some promo work. He rode a Suzuki around the course on a parade lap after the racing on Monday and was at Creg-ny-baa on Mad Sunday signing autographs (I’m not quite sure why and not many people seemed that interested). The promo girls were directing people towards his stand and, I have to say, I walked past it thinking it was just some bloke in leathers. That’s the bitter economics of motorcycle racing. Some riders make enough to move to a tax haven, but most of them just about scrape by. Hopkins had a number of years as a works GP racer and a couple of years as a works superbike rider, yet here he is at the TT doing promo work.
Steve Parrish was a works GP rider in the 1970s and ’80s, but was overshadowed by the fact that he was Barry Sheene’s team-mate. Guess who everyone wanted to interview after the race. Later, determined not to get a proper job, he turned to truck racing and then to TV punditry. He does MotoGP for BBC and the TT for ITV.
Parrish was in the pits, perhaps doing some background work or heading for an interview. The fact that he’s on TV makes him better known than he was as a GP racer and also, bizarrely, gives him some celebrity status that otherwise, he’d never have. Parrish was doing the camera-phone me-and-a-celebrity shot and didn’t look too happy about it. I guess he realised that once one person plucks up courage to ask you, then a dozen more realise what’s going on and jump on the bandwagon. The trick to getting through the pits and about your business is to stride purposefully. Any time you stop you’re a sitting target.
The biggest name at the TT, the man they all want a piece of, is John McGuinness and this year, there was barely enough McGuinness to go around. We saw him a number of times during the week and he sets a hot pace on and off the track. He enters six TT races, including the zero-emissions TT so has to practise and qualify for all classes.
On Friday evening he was at practice; on Saturday he was practising in a number of classes; on Sunday he raced the Superbike and then gave a talk with Hutchinson at the Palace; on Monday he raced eight laps in Superstock and Supersport classes and then a record-breaking lap on the electric Mugen, plus a demo lap on a classic Paten. That’s 380 miles, with around 350 of those at race pace, nudging an average of 130mph and demanding massive concentration and fitness. I’ve ridden that distance in a day on a road bike, on roads and at nothing like 130mph and I was ready for a good stretch at the end of it (to put it mildly). Interviewed afterwards, McGuinness said he was going to have a bit of a rest the next day, but when we went for a wander around the pits, there he was in the coffee area giving a TV interview. Standing to one side was a PR woman, holding a clipboard and checking her watch. Was she his manager for the day, steering him from one appearance to the next?
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| PR woman to his right, camera crew to the left. Situation normal for John McGuinness |
It was interesting to hear him speak about his day. One of his corporate commitments had been to help in a tribute to Joey Dunlop, who won 26 TTs and won his first TT for Honda 30 years previously. McGuinness’ Fireblade for the Superbike race was painted in a replica colour scheme, similar to Joey’s winning bike and he also had Dunlop leathers, his famous yellow helmet and race number. The “tribute” was kept a secret until just before the race and created quite a stir on the grid.
It was clear that McGuinness felt deeply uncomfortable about the whole thing. The last thing you want before the start of a race like the TT is to have a massive distraction like that. You need to be preparing yourself mentally, getting into the zone, not filling your head full of corporate “bullspeak”. Instead of saying what a fantastic TT rider Dunlop was (which he was) you want to be plotting how you’re going to beat his manic nephew Michael and take a few steps close to beating his tally of 26 TT victories.
Apart from the distraction, he also felt uncomfortable about dressing up as Joey Dunlop. I think McGuinness felt it was not right, perhaps a little disrespectful (despite the Dunlop family saying it was fine). Anyway, I’m sure it had an effect on his Superbike race. He normally blasts everyone away on the first couple of laps, does a super-fast pit-stop and the race is as good as won. This day McGuinness said he thought he was going fast, but when he got his lap boards, he was far slower than usual. He’d wanted to go quick, but as he said, he’d not wanted to crash with all the Joey stuff on and look a complete dickhead.
So McGuinness was slower than normal, then screwed up the pit-stop by speeding in pit-lane, getting a 60-second time penalty, so it was race over. He did manage to claim third place with a new record lap on the last lap and I think it took him that long to get his head together.
The distraction, in my view, cost McGuinness that race and allowed Michael Dunlop a confidence-boosting win. On the back of that, he was unstoppable all week and almost went through the card. McGuinness won the Senior to take his total number of wins to 20 and he also beat Joey Dunlop’s record of TT podiums.
Other motorcycle-related posts:
TT Rider Deaths are in Your Hands
Will Michael Dunlop Become the Greatest TT Racer of all Time?
Closer to the Riders
Notes from the Isle of Man
Will Michael Dunlop Become the Greatest TT Racer of all Time?
Closer to the Riders
Notes from the Isle of Man
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