Grandstand to Highlander

Competitor Guide with Steve Hislop

For the average racer Bray Hill is quite a daunting place. You accelerate away from the Grandstand and then suddenly it's the sheer drop-off which makes a lot of riders just shut the throttle momentarily until they experience it on a flying lap and then they settle themselves after that. I've taken the RVF Honda and a Norton, lapped through the bottom flat in 6th gear, so you're talking probably about 165 to 170 mph.

Years ago it used to be a big problem because if you let the bike drift too much to the left hand side of the old Ago's leap, it used to be dangerous but the Highway Board levelled it all across so you don't really have to work as hard now, but you still try and work hard at the actual right hander at the bottom so that you're probably coming up to the centre of the road. Even saying that, when you're in top gear, full throttle, the thing will stand on end over the top of the Ago's Leap. You're not trying to pull a wheelie but the thing just naturally comes up.

At Selborne Drive there's another left there which just kicks the thing up in the air. It's a non-camber - it's a bit adverse really and if you're crossing it at a funny angle, it tends to kick the bike up and then it's just bravery really on the brakes for Quarterbridge!

Quarterbridge is one of the slowest corners on the circuit - it's 1st gear. When you start a race or a practice session, you've got fresh tyres on maybe, especially starting a race with fresh slicks which could be quite cold, a full tank of fuel (24 litres) and really it's one of those corners that you could just slide off so easily when the front end loads itself up with all that weight on it. Especially on the 1st lap, you have to treat it with a lot of respect going nice and gentle. Because of the road filth (it's a roundabout every day of the year) you have to watch for the road grime, especially if it's damp. It's one of the slippiest corners of the lap. You get to the apex not so bad, but after you've apexed on the kerb on the right hand side the road then goes very adverse, you're trying to accelerate, just where the secondary part of the roundabout is, it's actually off-camber on a motorbike.

You have to treat Braddan Bridge with a lot of respect like Quarterbridge because it's quite slippy. They've resurfaced it, which has probably helped it, but until they did that it was getting really slippy. You'd draw yourself up, approaching it, you'd come back to 2nd gear. It's amazing how slow it is on the entry to Braddan. If you work hard on the 1st apex keeping your shoulder nicely in on the white railings on the left side, you should be basically in the middle of the parapet of the bridge. You should be cutting the white line into the right hander and then, the beauty is, you've got the little junction up to Kirby where you can use the whole area there at the junction and can feed the power on right through the apex and just drive it nicely out and flick around the end of the church wall and then go on up towards Snugborough.

Snugborough is another corner where you've really got to work harder on the entry. The secret of a lot of places at the TT is you've got to work hard on the way in to gain speed, especially a place like Braddan, because there is a straight after it. It's pointless looking impressive in the middle of Braddan Bridge if you're slow up the next straight. The same happens in Union Mills. I've seen loads of lads go hurtling into the top of Union Mills, they're all on the wrong side of the road, they struggle to change direction and, by the time they get to the Post Office, they're actually shutting the throttle when they should be driving from the Railway Inn. They should have the thing drawn up in the right bit of the road to be driving, feeding the throttle in because it's a long climb up the Ballahutchin. I've seen it before, especially going back to the Manx Grand Prix, before I'd really got the feel of the place myself. You could be going up the Ballahutchin and somebody would come past you on the same bike, maybe 15mph quicker, and you think to yourself, "That bike's going well". That's not the case, the bikes are probably identical, it's just that he'd got the line right. Now, over the last few years I've done that to so many people - even on a 250cc, maybe more so on a 250cc, where it's important to keep your speed up because those things haven't got the pulling power so you really have to work hard to carry speed onto straights.