ISLE OF MAN TT 2010

by lukevs

8am, Friday morning, I'm at London City Airport. Haven't slept much due to night shift. That doesn't matter, I'm off to the TT. Like many, I'd seen it on TV, DVD, Youtube, etc. And like many I'd said "I'm going to go there one day". Well here I am, actually on the way. My smile lasts the whole albeit short plane trip to the Sacred Isle.

I met my mates Matty and Woody in the airport bar. They'd met a bloke called Ray who was on his own. His missus was checking out the other sights of the UK and Europe but Ray was here to check out racing. Ray was from Melbourne, loved beer and played guitar in a metal band. Apart being a Southerner, he was a good bloke, and we got along great.

While looking for them I see Cam Donald picking up his mates in his tiny hire car. His Aussie mates turned out to be on the same flight as me. This is one of the many things I saw during my time on the Isle of Man "You wouldn't see that anywhere else."

After setting up camp, we wandered over to the pits and met up with my mate Colin, a Leeds native doing work for a bunch of racing teams in the road racing scene. He filled us in with the goings on of the week: who'd been fast, where to watch, what bikes to check out.

Then I had moment of realisation. I was enjoying a few cold pints, in the sun on a Friday afternoon, talking about motorcycles, listening to motorcycles being tuned and fettled. All at the TT on the Isle of Man…We'd only been here a few hours and things had gotten this good already. I hoped that things would stay this good for the rest of the week

Our accommodation for the duration was the well appointed campground of the St George's Rugby Ground, just near pit area and right on the part of Glencrutchery Road that makes up the main straight. The campground was a mix of many nationalities. English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Dutch, German, Polish, all sorts.

Campground allsorts

A conversation I will always remember was between a French rider, Colin and I. With his non-existent English, our near non-existent French and the use of various hand gestures, we managed to talk about our bikes, the bikes in the parking lot and where we came from. He'd ridden here from Lille with six friends in four days. His bike was a ‘03 R1 and they loved their sportsbikes and going fast. The three of us wandered through the parking lot and fawned over some of the exotic machinery and wondered how some even made it out their own driveway. The language of motorcycles can transcend international borders with ease.

Friday evening being the last practice session before the Superbike race meant a lot of bikes on the track. We went up to the Glencrutchery Road in front of the campground and got our first taste of road racing.

Holy. Crap.

It's just a normal road. With racing bikes. Excellent.

The road is like that of any road in a UK town or village. Not a great surface with bus stops, stone walls and street lights all the way along the track. Not the place for bikes that can lap at an average of 131mph. But yet they do it anyway. The first time you see the bikes come down the road, you get a real respect for the riders who challenge themselves and the TT course. They aren't sportsmen and women. They are gladiators. They know they may not come back, yet they do anyway. All for their own reasons, but for whatever reason is theirs, they make our lives better that they do.

Saturday: Superbike Race & Sidecar Race 1

The secret to watching the TT is you need a radio with you to know what is going on. You can see only a few corners at best and so you have no idea what is going on for the other thirty seven miles of track. But the race announcers do a great job of relaying the time splits of the riders and what their respective places are. They also have different broadcast positions around the track so they can see the riders in some of the more interesting spots and give the times and positions from their own location.

There is a lot of waiting around done at a TT. With thirty seven miles of road on an island in the Irish Sea, you're going to get some issues with the weather. The only thing to do is sit it out. So three hours later than planned, the Superbikes leave the starters gate. They start ten seconds apart and race the clock for six laps

Looking down onto the bottom of Bray Hill, towards Ago's Leap.

This is just before they bottom out and apex the corner at the same time.

First place to watch from is the bottom of Bray Hill we'd been told. It's not far from the start line, but far enough for the riders to get a good speed up from their start before dancing the bike down the uneven surface of Bray Hill. They change direction at the bottom of the hill, the apex being as close to the traffic lights as they dare. Mind you, the bike bottoms out at the base of the hill. If you're close enough, i.e. watching from them behind a stone wall on the inside of the corner like we were, you can smell the fibreglass after it's scraped across the racing line.

The people who told us to first watch from the bottom of Bray Hill were right. Nothing but road racing can give you such a show of skill and bravery. Then to make it more impressive you get to watch the sidecars race through there. It gets very interesting when three sidecars catch each other on the main straight and head down Bray Hill. No one wants to give an inch yet they must all try to fit into a narrow roadway. The fast guys like Dave Molyneux give a blast of sparks like lightning from the chassis bottoming out when they hit the tarmac at the lowest point of the corner.