Race Feature.....................................
Inspired by Dan Kneen’s save of the century (check out YouTube), we asked an elite bunch of TT racers what their hairiest moment around the Isle of Man course has been...
Close shaves at the TT don’t get closer than these...
Now I set my bike up for it a quarter of a mile beforehand...”
gary johnson
“I haven’t made that many mistakes round the TT. In my newcomer year I had a little bit of an issue with the section on the run up to Ballaugh Bridge. There are some white kerbs there, and I got a bit too close. I’d been warned about it, but in between concentrating and trying to learn the circuit – while going fast at the same time – I made a slip up. It’s caught a few people out in the past and they’ve paid the price for it. It was good in a way because now I’m nowhere near it. I set my bike up a quarter of a mile before to make sure I don’t. I made a mistake at Signpost, hit the banking and went over the bars one year, but that was at about 2mph! The brakes semi-failed me – they got too hot and started to fade, and I didn’t realise until the last moment.”
I was offlin e, but i didn’t thin k it deserved that sort
of reaction!”
dan kneen
“It’s got to be that one, I suppose. It was a bit of a nightmare year for me to be honest, I had quite a few problems with that bike. I don’t really know what happened. It was one of them, it just decided it was going to take a big tankslapper, it was doing it quite a lot to be honest. You’d be going along, same line, but it just wanted to tie itself in knots. I was probably offline a little bit that time, but I didn’t think it deserved that sort of reaction! Being a Manxman it’s always been a little easier to learn the circuit, but we only get to race it once a year.”
conor cummins
You should recall that Conor had one of the biggest crashes we’ve ever seen at the TT, when Cummins somehow survived a 140mph-plus crash at the Veranda. As for close shaves... “It was 2006, my first race as a newcomer. It was the superbike race and I just hit Rhencullen very wrong. I hit it on an angle, right on the piss, and it landed on the back wheel, which snapped and threw me every which way. My heart was in my mouth and I had to do another five laps after that! Insane.”
john mcguinness
“I’ve had a couple, running wide and stuff, but I had a massive tankslapper just after Kerrowmoar, and I mean massive. It was that vicious it ripped the clocks off and broke the steering damper. That was in 2005, in practice, and I’ll never forget it. It flicked my feet off the pegs and my foot was trapped under the back wheel and bent the back brake lever – and bent the fairing. It did a fair bit of damage. And it did a lot of damage psychologically to my head, because through that section of the course, even to this day, I’m pretty average. People say ‘I got a tankslapper and I rode out of it’. No chance. I was an absolute passenger. It went, bang! Lockstop, lockstop, lockstop. I was looking for damage limitation, where I could get up the kerb and make it as soft a landing as I could. But as it’s flat in top gear there it was going to be tricky.”
josh brookes
“The biggest moment I had on the course was over the jump at Rhencullen – and it was on TV! Visually it looked worse than I thought. I just thought it was a bit of a wobble and carried on, didn’t think much of it, but everybody made a big hoo-haa about it. At BSB, the thing’s normally out of control 90 per cent of the time anyway! Twice I ran wide at Sarah’s Cottage on the exit. I got in too quick, and got on the throttle too early. On the way out I had to roll off. But no dramas.”
james hillier
I actually crashed at the Creg and that was quite a moment. It was in the Senior race a few years ago, and we’d changed the bike quite a lot, gearing and ECU changes, and I braked where I thought I was braking before – but I was wrong. Plus, there was a big tailwind down towards the Creg and I went in way too hot, and ended up eating the air fence. I hurt my neck a little bit and the bike was broken, so I just had a beer.
I haven’t had many moments really. I don’t ride like that, I just try and keep things smooth. If you do ride like that you need to change, in my eyes, as it’s only a matter of time before it doesn’t end nicely. I agree with riding hard like on short circuits in some sections, and there are areas where you are pushing on, but it’s pushing the boundaries a bit. You need to use your head here...