The 14-time Isle of Man TT winner Peter Hickman has revealed that a component failure on his 8Ten Racing BMW was the cause of the crash that took him out of contention at this year’s race, breaking his silence over two weeks after he fell in practice.
Hickman crashed at Kerrowmoar during the Friday evening session of practice week, bringing out the red flags and initially being described as conscious and stable before being discharged from hospital a few days later and returning to the paddock to celebrate team-mate and team co-owner Davey Todd’s Superbike TT.
Since then, there’s been little in the way of updates on Hickman’s condition since then - but, in a video posted to his social media on Monday morning, the 38-year-old detailed the extent of the broken bones suffered in the fall.
“Condition wise I’m not too bad,” he explained. “I’ve got quite a lot of broken bones. I’ve broken my left collarbone, my left scapula, the shoulder blade down the back is in three pieces, I broke three ribs and four vertebrae in my back.
“It’s not ideal, but I just want to say a massive thanks to the marshals and medics who looked after me at the time. I don’t remember a lot about it, because I was knocked out.
“I don’t remember the lap leading up to it; in fact, the first thing I properly woke up, I woke up in hospital, which is a bit of a new experience for me in my 25-year career. I’ve still got some black eyes and I’m pretty battered and bruised all over the place.”
There was initial speculation after the crash that the cause was equipment failure on his new 2025-spec BMW M1000RR, something in part fuelled by both TV footage from the seconds before the crash of the fairing hanging off and of reports from the initial part of his lap of the bike smoking.
However, while Hickman explained that those weren’t contributing factors, it was the failure of an exhaust bracket that instead caused the 140mph crash.
“I crashed at Kerrowmoar,” he added. “Actually, just past the Kerrowmoar left at the next right, and unfortunately it was component failure and not actually my fault.
“The team are doing some more analysis at the moment, but it wasn’t the fairing like was speculated at, and it wasn’t oil although I know a lot of people thought they saw smoke. Unfortunately it was the bracket that holds the exhaust in place. It didn’t come loose, it broke and pushed the exhaust into the rear tyre and popped it.
“That’s why I crashed, and it’s obviously not ideal at all. I’ve been going to the Isle of Man TT now for ten years, and this is the first major problem that I’ve ever had. It’s just one of those things, and I have to thank the 8Ten Racing team because they looked after me loads.
“It’s none of the guys’ fault; the bike was faultless. But it was a brand new bike to us, we hadn’t done a lot of testing, and these things can happen.”
