With the 2025 North West 200 done and dusted and the international road racing season now underway, we’ve finally got some reference points for the Isle of Man TT after a long few months without seeing the top names going head to head.
And, with this year’s event on the Triangle Circuit producing a real mixed bag of results across all four classes, we can start to make better predictions for what happens early next month when bikes head down Bray Hill in anger at the TT.
Michael Dunlop is on form
This should, of course, come as no real surprise given the pace that Dunlop, now the most successful TT racer of all time, normally arrives on the Isle of Man with.
But, with an extensive pre-season testing programme this year that has included both trips to Spain and the chance to race a BMW the same as his superbike in the Le Mans 24 Hours, he really came out at the North West 200 firing on all cylinders.
Routinely the match of big rivals Davey Todd and Peter Hickman at the TT, he normally lags behind somewhat at the NW200 given his relative lack of short circuit experience. Less practiced at the hard-braking style needed for the Northern Irish race and more suited for the slowing style needed for the TT, until this year he hadn’t won since 2016.
All that extra track time seems to have changed the dynamic somewhat this time around, though, especially when compounded by Hickman and Todd’s own relative lack of track time thanks to their complicated pre-season - and for the first time ever, Dunlop was able to take the fight to them in style.
That should be something of a worry for his rivals. If he can maintain the form he showed last weekend for another two weeks, it could well be that they find him very hard indeed to beat.
Hickman and Todd are still building their team
Building a factory-supported race team out of the ashes of FHO Racing in the course of only a few short months was always going to be a bit of a struggle for 8Ten Racing co-owners Hickman and Todd, and that showed a little not just at the North West 200 but also at the opening round of the 2025 British Superbike season at Oulton Park a few days earlier.
Limited in their testing and still somewhat ring-rusty after a winter spent more on building bikes than testing them, despite Todd racking up more wins than anyone else at the NW200, things didn’t exactly go the way that they’d planned, and it’s clear that there’s still work to do.
Mechanical issues in particular reared their heads at the NW200, and will be even more of a factor at the TT given the punishing nature of the 37.73-mile long course.
They’ve got the data and the experience from their first road race together, though, as well as the benefit of another BSB round before heading to the TT, which should hopefully give them the chance to find what’s missing from the brand new 8Ten package.
Dean Harrison is going to be a dark horse
The quietest of the big names coming into this year’s NW200, a few rivals had suggested that Dean Harrison could be something of a dark horse both for that race and for the TT given the decent pace he showed in the opening weekend of the British Supersport championship on his factory-backed Honda machine.
That translated very well indeed into blistering speed at the NW200 as well. There's still a few things to refine, including a high-speed stability issue on the Fireblade that the team seemed to be getting to grips with over the course of the weekend, but it’s clear that the work is coming together nicely.
Harrison hasn’t exactly been at the sharp end of late, and his debut Honda season in 2024 was something of a disappointment - but things look like they might be shaping up for a much stronger year in 2025 as he takes over from Dunlop as Honda’s top-billed star.
