Peterhickman: ‘to me I’m not taking risks.’

You could say it was inevitable that Peter Hickman would end up a TT hero. His father Dave won the 250cc Manx

Grand Prix in 1977 and might’ve gone on to bigger things if he hadn’t suffered career-ending injuries at the Mallory Park post-tt meeting in June 1979, when he crashed exiting Gerard’s and was twice run over.

Dave switched from riding to spannering, first with several GP teams, then with the JPS Norton squad, who briefly dominated the British championships with their fiery rotary racer. Peter’s earliest memories are of toddling around paddocks while his dad went about his business. But of course there’s no such thing as inevitability, especially in motorcycle racing. Hickman Senior didn’t want his son to ride bikes, let alone race them, so Peter had to make it happen himself.

‘I bought my first bike when I was 12, without telling my dad,’ he recalls. ‘I hid it away, so he didn’t see it. It was a wheelbarrow full of bits, a Kawasaki AR50. Eventually I couldn’t figure out how to put it together, so I plucked up the courage to say, “by the way, dad, I bought