Keppel Gate to Cronkny Mona

Competitor Guide with Steve Hislop

It's quite scarey and then it's quite nice to get off there, up into top. I like the approach to Keppel Gate. You'll notice just about every post on the right hand side round the last right kink before Keppel, they're all painted yellow and I use them as a braking marker. You've got to be brave on the brakes. If you take it right to the start of the yellow posts you can brake hard, cranked over, down to maybe 2nd gear and arrive at Keppel just nicely.

You've got to watch out at Keppel because the road just starts to fall away a bit. They've got the double white line up there, even though they're meant to be painted in "non-slip" paint, you still "whoof" as you cross them! Because of the camber the thing will kick up, especially the big bike. Short shift up to 4th before Kate's and then just nail it and then 5th, 6th, usually just save 6th gear until the drop off because it doesn't matter where you are on the big bike, the thing will stand on end anyway. It's nice to hook top gear and it stops the bike from coming up too much. You get down over the ripples as soon as the road levels.

Creg-ny-Baa is a corner you can get sucked into. You can try and be too brave on the brakes and you'd just end up in a mess! I usually wait until I'm just over the last of the ripples then I just roll the throttle, start to draw it up steady. It's better to be in smooth and drive hard out - as soon as you've pitched in to the actual tight corner you should be starting to feed it in, bolt upright away down towards Brandish. Along through the cutting which can be quite windy at times, you're probably doing 175 to 180mph through that right kink which is quite tight, you get through it and suddenly the road opens out you think "Phew!" and that's on every lap!

It is quite tight through there, then there's the "Brandish 200 metre" sign. They always put it on the big hawthorne tree on the right hand side. That's usually just hard on the anchors and, believe it or not, Brandish seems quite a quick corner but it's back to 2nd gear, even on the big bike, so you're fairly holding the thing back into the corner and then just punch it out. (This was written before Brandish was re-profiled in 2006/07.)

You'll just be hooking 6th gear as you approach Hillberry and what I usually tend to do is - 5th would pull through and up towards Cronk-ny-Mona but you're in 6th gear, a quick jab of the brakes, you're down the edge of that little wall at Hillberry, a bit of brake then back to 4th and then I go through the bottom in 4th but as soon as I'm level with that grass banking on the exit I've probably hooked 5th again and the thing just zaps its way up and then I just look for the telegraph pole at the end of Johnny Watterson's Lane.

I aim straight towards that and by the time I'm getting up towards it I'm back into top gear. Then I'm just starting to feather the throttle in towards the start of Cronk-ny-Mona and the best bet is to stay way out on the right hand side. It's opened up quite a lot there - the thing is it's climbing up a few different steps as you go up around there and years ago I had a big scare on a 350cc because I was holding it flat, and just as I came around the last bit, the thing went light so it let go and nearly high sided me! So the best bet is to approach it faster and then start to feather the throttle all the way around, then you're keeping a bit of speed but you're just feathering it. The thing is about riding it that way, as you come around the last little apex at the top, you're just cutting right back on the left hand side, because you've rolled it you just start to brake gently for Signpost.