Think Carl Fogarty with an Irish accent.
Last year, I didn't want him to do a clean sweep of wins. I wanted Ian Hutchinson to keep that record to himself and I wanted John McGuinness to win more races, so I was delighted when Dunlop, who had looked unstoppable, was beaten by McGuinness in the Senior.
For 2014, Dunlop walked out on Honda, presumably because he felt he wasn't getting the deal that he should. It looked as if he wouldn't have a ride and would miss this year's TT, but then BMW came in with an offer and he became a works rider for them with the TT as the big target.
Judging by the moans and complaints at the NW200, to say nothing of a spat with his brother William, Michael's character was unreformed.
It's odd that I dislike this trait in Dunlop, because in many ways, he's exactly like Carl Fogarty used to be in his heyday. Nothing was ever quite right for Foggy, he never seemed to enjoy his wins and the world was always against him as well. Oddly, I didn't mind Foggy's constant moans; it wasn't exactly endearing, but it was part of the man.
You should never jump to conclusions about people you don't know (Michael is probably very kind to his dog) and, guess what, I'm warming towards the guy.
Why? Well, in the first instance, he's a hell of a rider. What separates road racers from track racers is hard to say; it's a different technique. Apart from anything, on track, if you fall off, chances are you won't be hurt and riders suffer falls all the time. On roads, you don't want to fall off; if you do, you'll be lucky to escape unhurt.
This builds a different tolerance of risk. Track racers will be much closer to the limit, road racers will give themselves a safety margin (a small one, but still a margin). There are other differences, track is more stop/start, it's more intense, but it's also shorter and tracks are easier to learn.
I was staggered, last year, to see the intensity Michael Dunlop brought to the TT. He was riding the course 101 per cent, like a circuit racer. Mark Marquez probably loses the front 20 times a race and brings it up on his knee; seeing Dunlop do that on the Isle of Man was incredible, doing that on the mountain section where the tram tracks cross the road at the Bungalow was unbelievable.
I admired the commitment, but I've always considered Dunlop to be a bit of a nutter and I expected his TT success to be short and spectacular, I didn't think anyone could push that hard at the TT and stay on board, but he did and he did.
Turning the BMW into a TT winner was no easy task. It's a fast bike, but (by all accounts) not as easy to ride as the Honda and has no previous data to help your set-up. It's not won a World Superbike championship, despite hiring the best riders, and in BSB it's a steady top 10 finisher, rarely sniffing the podium.
In some respects that might take the pressure off Dunlop, but he's certainly on a big bonus to win and he's got all of the BMW factory looking at his riding (those that weren't actually on the Isle of Man helping him). He said this week that if he won the Senior TT, the bike would be shipped straight back to Munich and put in the BMW museum alongside Georg Meier's supercharged flat-twin, which won in 1939 - 75 years ago. Dunlop said he'd never had a bike put in a museum before and the significance of a win clearly wasn't lost on him.
For this year's TT, the intensity he brought to his riding in 2013 was back again. In the Superbike TT, he took an early lead and never let it slip. He broke the lap record on the first and second laps but then he did the sensible thing, sat on his lead and brought the bike home. Bruce Ansty broke the lap record again on the final lap (the first 132mph lap) but Dunlop didn't seem too concerned - he'd won the race and that was what he was there to do.
Guy Martin was second and he rode as well as I've ever seen him, but he had no answer to Dunlop.
Gary Johnson's popular win on the Triumph in the first Supersport race meant there would be no clean sweep for Dunlop, but he went on to win the Superstock, Supersport race two and the Senior. He now has 11 wins and he's still only 25, the same age as this year's top rookie, Peter Hickman (who did a fantastic 129.104mph lap incidentally).
That win in the Senior was achieved in the knowledge that his brother William had crashed, but without knowing how he was. In a week when two riders have died, that must have been in his mind.
Michael Dunlop is still taciturn, he still seems to take little pleasure in his success and he's still complaining. So why am I warming towards him?
His committed style continues from last year. I'm still not sure that he isn't pushing too far, but now I'm starting to think that it's supreme talent, not recklessness, that's bringing him success. Indeed, this year, it was other riders - like Guy Martin, Bruce Anstey (and William Dunlop) - who had big moments, while Michael seemed very solid.
I like the fact that he's hands-on when it comes to his machinery. It shows a rider who understands mechanical issues and is therefore able to say what's wrong when he's on the bike and something doesn't feel right; or he's able to ride around a fault (sometimes). Michael builds his own Supersport bikes (Hondas) and, although his freedom to get a socket set out and start dismantling the BMW is very limited, he is able to have a big input. During practice week, he swapped from Metzeler tyres to Dunlops - a massive decision that could only be taken by someone with intimate understanding of a bike's handling dynamics. His uncle (Joey Dunlop) was famous for always working on his own machines. Honda did give him 125cc and 250cc two-strokes and left him to it, but they didn't allow him to work on the factory four-stroke engines. It's the same with Michael; BMW doesn't have a two-stroke it can offer to keep him quiet, so his Supersport Honda fulfils that purpose. When it comes to the Superbike, it's a full-on factory WSB engine (better than the guys in British Superbikes get) and Michael isn't able to work on that. The engine technician is a woman, one of only three people qualified to work on the engine, and she was flown in from Germany.
Michael Dunlop isn't the first rider to be somewhat taciturn and introspective. Mick Doohan press conferences would not have challenged a reporter's shorthand skills and Casey Stoner was considered a miserable git because he never had anything to say. When a rider wins a great race, you want them to share your joy and pleasure having witnessed it. If they don't appear happy and then have a long list of moans about the bike, the track, the other riders, it deflates your happy mood.
Mark Marquez is handsome, happy, always on message and always with a beaming smile. He makes you think he loves his racing and you like him all the more for that. It's the same with Valentino Rossi, who was a breath of fresh air after the dour Doohan years.
I guess Michael Dunlop is one of those men who, if he has nothing to say, prefers to say nothing. When a microphone is shoved under his nose at the end of the race (and there are 10 more waiting behind that one), he doesn't have an easy soundbite to trot out.
Come on Michael, it's not hard: that was fantastic, the bike is brilliant, I want to say thank you to ...
His lack of words and his Foggy-like tendency towards moaning suggest he is a miserable git, but we saw him a couple of times in the pits and he was anything but a grouch. He was trying to go about his business, but fans were round him like wasps on a jam scone. His tactic was to adopt a rugby-style head dip, but it was a waste of time. He seemed painfully shy and embarrassed, but he never once said no (even politely); he didn't smile for the camera-phone, but he posed, signed and took a small step closer to where he needed to be.
I saw him reach the safety of corporate hospitality and manage to get to the other side of the security men. There were not too many people about, but he'd been ambushed four or five times in a 30-yard distance. He was heading for the tent when a man and woman with a small boy shouted "Michael, can we have a picture?" It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have said: "sorry, really late, I have to dash." They would have been disappointed, but couldn't have thought badly of him, but he came back, stepped outside, posed for the picture and then scooted back.
He missed seeing the pleasure and excitement of that small family. Perhaps in 30 years time, that small boy will be able to show his children the picture of him with the great Michael Dunlop - the most successful TT racer of all time.
His uncle Joey holds the record with 26 and he was 48 when he won his final TT. Michael is 25 and already has 11 wins, so the potential is clearly there. He's won eight in the last two years, so he could retire at 35 with 50 wins.
I've no idea if he will break Joey's record or not. The statistics suggest he will, but racing is a fickle business. Look at Ian Hutchinson - wins five TTs in 2011 and then suffers a career-changing crash in a Supersport race at Silverstone, where the gravel trap and run-off is bigger than most TT car parks. Look at Gary Johnson, on top of the world after winning the Supersport TT for Triumph this year; the next day he's in hospital with a broken collarbone and cracked vertebrae.
Who knows what will happen. What I do know is that it will be interesting to watch in the next 10 years.
Footnote: interesting that, when I was looking for images to use with this piece, most of the pictures of Michael Dunlop saw him grinning like a Cheshire cat!
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
No comments:
Post a Comment