“It’s not a bad thing to think about it, because most of the time it’s happened for a reason, and it just makes you realise ‘don’t go 100 per cent here, it can bite you, this corner…’ “The more years you come, the more deaths you’ll have seen here, so then at every corner it’s happened, you remember it,” says Hutchy (right). Interviews with Dan filled the bike magazines and TT race programmes adorning café and pub tables across the island, lauding him a future hero, yet by the time anyone could read them, he’d passed away. In the lead-up to 2018’s event, local boy Dan Kneen, one of the strong contenders for podiums – perhaps wins – was killed in practice. There’s no avoiding it on this island more than 250 people have died across TT and Manx GP events held since 1907, and the last year without a fatality in either was 1982. Which segues us to the elephant in the room when it comes to the TT. Which can happen anywhere in life, can’t it?” You know what you’re doing, barring anything that’s out of your hands. You’re no longer nervous, because you’re in control. Then as soon as you set off down Bray hill, you enjoy riding the bike and it all goes out the window. You’re thinking of all the things that can go wrong. “When you’re down in the paddock and the race is about to start, you think there’s got to be easier ways to earn a living. But as soon you get going, it’s a different story. The build-up here is a bit like going on a rollercoaster you’re sat in the chair, strapped in, and you’ve no idea why you’re doing it again. “But if you pack in, then that’s it you’re never riding round the Isle of Man like that ever again. “Yeah, it’d be easier to pack in!” laughs Hutchy. When you’re in the paddock and the race is about to start, you think there’s got to be easier ways to earn a living His left leg was in a cage just weeks ago.
It’s yet another that could have been a career ender, and it’s quite staggering he’s fit enough to climb on a bike this year.
ISLAND RACER MAGAZINE MANUAL
It’s also his first time driving a manual car since the latest in his series of deeply unlucky leg injuries. His knowledge of the course is evident in his quite absurd commitment in a hot hatch significantly larger and heavier than a race bike. Hutchy has won 16 TT races, and remains the only man to win five races in one week, back in 2010 (pictured in the lead image).
ISLAND RACER MAGAZINE FULL
It’s under these circumstances I meet Ian Hutchinson, as he gives me a full 37.73-mile lap in a Honda Civic Type R course car. But not under the same, no-limits conditions as the racers themselves. Sure, you can drive stretches of the Le Mans track, or sections of World Rally stages. The latter famously has no speed limit when it’s open to the public, and during TT fortnight it’s one-way, allowing visitors to the island to play TT racer on their bike (or TT marshal in their car) when the circuit isn’t closed for racing. The TT course isn’t a specialist racetrack, but a neatly palindromic 37.73 miles of Isle of Man road closed off an hour before race time, with bikes flung through towns at six times the urban speed limit before snaking fearsomely through the island’s lush scenery, culminating in the legendary plunge over Snaefell Mountain. It’s what sets road racing apart from traditional circuit racing. It feels utterly mad and joyously liberating to see racing at such close quarters.
Stepping foot between the walls either side of the live circuit is quite rightly illegal (and severely punished by the Isle of Man courts), yet you can perch on top of those walls, or poke your head right over them. But you’ve no need for expertise to have your jaw dropped by the physical rush of bikes blitzing past your face at up to 200mph, nor their stomach-churning skips and squirms over crests or joyous little wheelies as they accelerate hard at corner exit.Īnd all with your face as close to the riders as you dare put it.
Practice and race sessions stretch across two weeks, with a slightly dizzying array of bike classes that might befuddle the casual onlooker.
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