Most liked posts in thread: Isle of Man TT (2012)

Yeah, I believe when a professional rally navigator says "Dear God...." out loud, that officially counts as a 'moment'.

 

I went to the TT several times in the 90s and it is a fairly memorable place. High up my list, and still capable of producing a small nightmare, is holding my heavy-but-grunty Honda ST1100 against the throttle stop all the way up the 'mountain mile' to reach something like 140 on the speedo (yeah, probably only just over 100....) and, as I went for the brakes for Mountain Box, being passed simultaneously on both sides by two sports bikes doing easily 30-40mph more than me. The 'shock wobble' I went into took me right onto the edge of the road and it's luck, not skill, that sees me here today.....

 

One year that I went to the Isle of Man races, the Minister (=Secretary of State*) of Tourism reversed out of his drive onto the race track during one of the practice sessions. He was immediately noticed by a marshall who called the police and he got a ticket for it. Driving, walking or just standing on the race track during the races or practices, except for competitors, is a crime.

I have watched the races leaning against a stone wall, with the racing line on the road just the other side of the wall. I think I could just about have reached my arm over the wall and had my hand hit by a bike - though actually I didn't try that....

Look at 1:05 in that latest video - there are several places on the course where the limit of how near the rider can get to the apex of a bend is a stone wall. Riders have finished TT races with scratches in their helmets where they went just a little too far. Being 2ft away is sloppy.

*The Isle of Man is technically a small country (population 80,000, area 1/5th that of Rhode Island, ...) with its own laws and government. So it does have Ministers, and this Minister was the one in charge of running the TT races, so his claim that he 'forgot' the practice sessions had started didn't go down too well.