Quarry Bends to Kerromoar

Competitor Guide with Steve Hislop

On a little bike you'll hold it flat out around the first right hander but on a big bike I usually hook back a gear to steady it up. On a big bike you just drop a little bit on the brakes, because you're probably talking 130 to 140mph, hook it back to 5th and then drive it as hard as you can around the blind right, working really hard to get the bike away across to where the old road was, where there's a layby. I hook back another gear, really work hard at holding the kerb on the left as you go in, and then work hard on the left kerb to give you loads of room. You've probably hooked back into 5th gear by this time, around the little ivy covered wall there, around the right and you can nearly hook top gear as you go around the left. If you've got it right then you're carrying all that speed up the Sulby Straight. Quarry Bends is so fast you have to get it right and on a good big bike, you can hook into top gear - if not just exiting that last left, definitely before the little right flick as you suddenly come along. Then you've got the fast left and your on past the Sulby Glen and along the rest of the Straight.

Sulby Straight is just like a green tunnel at that speed. You can see the light at the end but it's just a tunnel. You can imagine pulling 30,000 revs, 180mph, you're just bouncing, the engine revs are kicking up all the time. You're trying to hold yourself down, it's belting you on the chest, you're actually getting kicked above the screen and you get to the village. You go through the right kinks, still flat and the braking point should be about at the 200 metre board which is up on the telegraph pole. Serious hard braking here, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and then into the bridge. The last couple of years that I did it with bigger bikes, by the time I'm getting to the right kink in the village you're just quite happy to start braking. Spectators sitting at the side might say "Bit of a wimpy shot that", but it's just by the time you get there you've had enough. You have to get yourself set up ready for Sulby Bridge because then you're coming into the next most serious section. Ballacraine to Sarah's you have to get right, but I reckon the most important section is from the Ginger Hall to School House corner.

So, out of Sulby Bridge, short shift up to 2nd, 3rd, watch the railings at Ginger Hall and then that is the start of the serious work. Up over the top towards Kerromoar. The approach down to Kerromoar is wicked. Over the brow, down to the left hander. You have to let the bike really feel itself and let it settle. Through the bottom and then your totally on an unnatural line. Around the next right hander, you're way across to the left, it's so bumpy that you don't want to be accelerating hard around there. You just start to feather it in, round the banking and you just change your body over and it goes over a little bit of a jump before the Glen Duff straight (it is a bit of a twister but basically it's a straight). That is the bumpiest section of the T.T. course.