‘It takes skill and calculation to race at the TT – if I was a lunatic I’d be coming home in a box’

Robert Dunlop of the renowned Northern Irish road-racing dynasty once said the “thrill of racing the TT circuit and getting home again just about outweighs the fear of not racing”. The late Dunlop wasn’t alone: the thrill of the TT has lured motorcycle racers to the Isle of Man for 117 years. 

This year, about 100 riders will compete in the world’s most famous motorcycle road races across five classes. Once again, the “Jewel of the Irish Sea” has surrendered 37 and three quarter miles of its public roads for two weeks of practice and racing on a course peppered with bus stops, manhole covers, stone walls and lampposts. 

The fastest man of the moment is 13-times winner Peter Hickman, whose outright average lap record is 136.358mph – sensational given that speeds across a TT lap range from 20mph on the hairpin bends to 200mph on Sulby Straight, with hundreds of gear changes per lap. 

But the pressure is on as Yorkshireman Dean Harrison (now on a factory Honda) and up-and-coming star Davey Todd (Milwaukee BMW) are eager to, in the words of Todd, “Knock him off his perch.” Other front-runners include James Hillier of the WTF team, Hickman’s FHO/BMW teammate Josh Brookes and Honda’s 23-times TT winner John McGuinness.

But for TT 2024 all eyes are on Michael Dunlop who, with 25 TT wins, is tantalisingly close to matching his uncle Joey Dunlop’s yet-to-be beaten tally of 26 victories on the Island. 

There is an added poignancy to Dunlop’s racing career: his father, five-times TT winner Robert Dunlop, quoted above, was killed at the North West 200 in 2008 during practice for the 250cc race. The next day, 18-year-old Michael joined his older brother, William, to compete in the 250cc race – against the race organisers’ ruling – and won, dedicating the victory to his father. Then, in 2018, William was killed at the Skerries road race in Ireland, leaving Michael to carry the Dunlop mantle and live up to the title of his book: Road Racing: It’s In My Blood.

Dunlop won four races at TT 2023 but this wasn’t enough. “I did eight races and won four but I could have won the other four so I was a bit disappointed,” he says. “But these things happen: the TT course throws curve balls at you and you have to take it on the chin and battle on and keep moving on.”

Such curve balls beset all riders at the TT, sometimes before the event has started; Dunlop has an injured wrist and Hickman hurt his hand in a crash at Oulton Park in May. This is before the riders have even tackled the TT course, which is a brutal test of man and machine with more than 260 corners (not to mention the hundreds of kinks) and a course that ranges from tunnel-like tree-lined roads to a fast, flowing mountain section which rises to just under 2,000ft above sea level.

Its variety is what attracts racers from across the globe but it comes at a price, as Todd says: “It’s bumpy as hell and you feel like you’re getting kicked in for 37 and three quarter miles for 17 minutes a lap. It’s like someone’s battering your ankles and your elbows and your shoulders.”

The course is equally punishing on the brain, as Hillier says: “People say you have to be a lunatic to race at the TT but if I was a lunatic I’d be coming home in a box. It takes a lot of skill and calculation to race at the TT.”

Todd says: “The TT is an intellectual race – you have to plan ahead for every single corner as that affects how you approach the following corners. I can ride around Donington Park [a modern, purpose-built racing circuit] with my eyes closed but after a six-lap race around the TT course my brain is absolutely fried.”

This is more so given the increasing pace of riders at the TT. Todd, Brookes, Hillier, Hickman and Harrison are all competing in the British Superbike and British Superstock championship, thus bringing sharper riding to the event. 

“It’s definitely tight now,” says Hillier. “The margin for error is getting smaller and smaller and there are certain sections of the course where there is no room for error at all.” He points to Barregarrow, a left-right-left kink with a wall on the left and a huge dip at which most machines bottom out while travelling at 150mph.

Harrison says: “The races are getting tight, which is a good thing for spectators. We are splitting hairs now but that’s a positive thing.” Does this bring greater pressure for Harrison? “The racing is close but the only one with pressure is Pete [Hickman] because he’s on the same bike with the same team and he’s the winner. He’s the one with something to lose.”

Hickman is comfortably racing at an average fastest speed of 136mph. “People ask me if I can get to 137mph. I can but I want to win the race at the slowest possible pace,” he says. He attributes his success at the TT to strategy around his size. “I’ve always been one of the bigger riders so I’ve had to ride really hard on the corners because I’ve always lost out on acceleration and braking because of my size, so whenever we get big fast corners – like on the mountain [section of the TT lap] – I’m always really strong,” he says. “Psychology is important, too. I’m good at working out where my competitors are strong and where they’re not.”

Despite being the fastest man around the TT course (also the first to clock more than 200mph through the Sulby Straight speed trap) Hickman is notoriously laid back. Even on the start line, when waiting for his slot to set off (the TT is a time trial, in which riders set off at 10-second intervals) he says: “I just count to 10 when it’s my turn next and make sure my bike’s in first gear.” 

One wonders how much faster man and machine can go at the TT. In its 117-year history, speeds have soared from Oliver Godfrey’s 1911 average around the mountain course of 47.63mph (riding an Indian) to Harold Daniell’s 91mph record in 1938 (despite having such poor eyesight he was rejected by the army) on a Norton and then Bob McIntyre’s 101mph record in 1957 riding a Gilera. Half a century after McIntyre’s feat, McGuinness (Honda) became the first to average more than 130mph.

Of course, the TT has always been – and will always be – dangerous. But as McGuinness says: “No one is holding a gun to our heads. We have to embrace it – it’s been going for more than 100 years. I’m pleased to still be part of it and setting off at number one on a factory Honda. I’ll be happy in the top six and if I’m shite at least I’ll get on the telly.” 

For Hillier, the lure of the TT is the speed and the risk: “I don’t know if I like the risk but I thrive off the risk factor.” Hillier also says that in a world of surveillance, speed cameras and punitive fines the event also represents liberty. “It’s a sort of two fingers up to authority. It’s the ultimate freedom.” 

Dunlop, however, is less philosophical about the TT: “I just want to win races.”

Race Week at the Isle of Man TT starts on June 1 and runs until June 8. ITV4 is showing highlights every night at 9pm. Live action is streamed on TT+ Live Pass for a one-off fee of £19.99.