The Isle of Man TT and the legend of Joey

In the world of 4 wheel road racing, there are 3 giants 24hrs of Le Mans, Monaco GP and the Indy 500. In off roading there are only 2, The Baja 1000 and the Dakar Rally. In Motorcycle racing there is only one. The Isle of Man is a small little Island located right between Great Britain and Ireland. It is however a separate country from either although the Queen is still chief. As such the nice government over there is quite lenient in terms of certain rules, one rule is the abolishing of speed limits in certain areas of the island. This has attracted the attention of former F1 champion Nigel Mansell who now lives there. Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson also has set up a home there.

In 2007 and 2008 Top Gear Magazine set up a sorta supercar holiday retreat over there, where they get a mixture of the 10 fastest road legal cars for sale in England [and a carefully chosen hot hatch] and spend a weekend exploiting them on closed-off roads. This test is a nice read where the articles are composed back to front in such a way that it comes across as a conversation that covers the strengths and weaknesses of each cars. One thing that was consistent among them all was that they were all terrified of the daunting narrow roads, hard cobblestone walls and steep cliffs into the rough ocean as a result only the soft and predictable [aka family cars] went fast. Immediately after the test the magazine went on to an article about the Isle of Man TT's 100th race.

Unlike most races the Isle of Man is a 2 week carnival of speed which consists of motorcycles racing one by one through the streets of Mann and the rider with the highest average speed is declared the winner. In this 2 week event the track caters to both amateurs and professionals. The amateur event has a day called Mad Sunday where the track is open to the public. The writer of Top Gear's article managed to get near to 130mph, he was brought into shock by the current record holder John McGuinness who managed to average 130mph. The track has barely changed over 100 years, only the bikes have gotten faster.

With every race there is a legend. For Monaco, Ayrton Senna's 6 wins are highly unlikely to be beaten any time soon, so are Tom Kristensen's 8 Le Man's wins. Joey Dunlop has won the Isle of Man TT 26 times. Even though these are class wins, it is still alot. In 1985, 1988 and 2000, Dunlop won for three different classes in each of those years. His death in 2000 lead the officials to do everything except name the TT after him.

Mr. Dunlop himself

To summarise the Isle of Man TT is

• dangerous [227 deaths in 102 years]
• dangerous [most bikers go airborne, and goin airborne in a racing bike lead to an unpredictable landing]
• dangerous [did i mention the big walls and steep cliffs @130mph on a motorcycle
• fast: to quote Paul Regan from Top Gear Magazine "Watching a works [Honda] Fireblade top 180mph between dry stone walls completely redefines your concept of speed."

Share this post