What takes people to the Isle of Man TT when there are plenty of other racing options that have much less inherent risk?
Well, ask a TT racer that question and they’ll tell you quite simply that there’s no drug quite like setting off from the start line on Glencrutchery Road - and perhaps no one with more experience of that feeling than 23-time TT winner John McGuinness.
McGuinness has been racing at the TT since 1996, and in that time has become not only the third-most successful racer of all time behind only Michael and Joey Dunlop, but has also very much been the TT’s biggest global ambassador thanks to the relationship he’s built with everyone from MotoGP racers to film stars and royalty.
And while at 53 years old he might be going into this year’s event more focused on top 10 finishes than on adding to his record of wins, the Honda Racing rider has been faster than he’s ever been during his pre-season testing programme, something that bodes well for fuelling his addiction to racing at the TT.
“I'm setting personal bests,” he explained to The Race in an exclusive interview that you can hear much more of in both a special episode of The Race MotoGP Podcast next week and in The Race Members’ Club on Patreon.
“I'm still in the pack if you like. We're not going backwards, we're at points-scoring BSB Superstock pace which is not hanging about to be fair, them kids.
“It's like a disease, it's a nightmare, I can't get it out of my system. I just keep getting up in the morning and it's something to do with racing. Have we got this ready, have we got that ready?
“It's like a routine that just takes over your life a lot of the time but it's good though, it is good. It's nice.
“I keep saying it, but sponsors have faith in me. They let me ride the bike, they don't put any pressure on, just said 'go and enjoy it, if you're eighth, you're eighth, if you're whatever, you're whatever. If you want to stop, stop.’”
Part of that desire to keep going, to keep turning up every year at the TT to race, very much comes from McGuinness’ background. Not just a motorbike racer but rather someone who has lived and breathed bike racing all his life, there’s a distinct impression that even had he never raced the TT, he’d still be sat on the hedge every year watching, something that’s a significant part of his huge fan appeal.
“I was on a bike when I was a toddler,” he explains. “I was at race meetings as a baby with my dad, getting dragged around grass tracks, scramble races, transatlantic jobs and grands prix, it's been part of my DNA I suppose.
“I like bikes, I like them, two strokes, four strokes, fuel injected, fly by wire. I’ve gone through three generations, three decades really of evolving motorcycles.
“It's not a tool for my job, like a trowel when I was a bricky. A motorbike for some people is there to make their wages and it isn't for me, I actually like them.”
That background also helps form at least some of his relationship with the nature of the TT and the inherent risks. Motorcycles are, fundamentally, dangerous things - and while some of the low points of his time at the TT might have left him questioning his choices, McGuinness believes that it’s also what unites people in their love for the race and for bikes in general.
“Yeah there've been some bumps in the road,” he admits. “There's been some scratch your head moments for a lot of people. Why did we do it? But everybody wants to see it, wants to go and see it. Everyone has heard about it, the big roads.
“The thing is with motorcycles, you can relate to great times, but everybody knows someone who has been hurt on a bike as well. ‘Our Uncle Bob got killed on one of them going to work, on his GPZ550.’
“There's that as well, they have that love-hate, that stigma, whatever you want to call it, but when anyone is out on a motorbike, even on a road going for a cup of tea, everyone is happy. I’ve never seen anybody pedalling a bicycle with a smile on their face. It's rubbish. You don't see runners enjoying themselves.”
Perhaps the most frequent comment levelled at TT racers is that they must be insane to do what they do, taking on the 37.73 mile course where, statistically, someone will lose their life competing every year.
But the reality of their mental state couldn’t be further from the truth - specifically because of the dangers posed by the circuit and the challenges involved in learning it well enough to be properly fast.
“If you're nuts,” McGuinness says, “you last five minutes, you're gone, instantly. It's just that fine risk-reward, find that rhythm, fitness, bike, team, everything just all determination and it just lines up. We all have an inner safety barrier, even the top guys.
“I know it won't look like it from the outside and onboard everyone is like 'f**k...' when the conditions aren't as good, people will come down a mile an hour, we'll all come down a mile an hour.
“If conditions are good enough, we'll go up two miles an hour. it just goes in like a wave of feeling the conditions of the track. I get frustrated with it, they say you're mad, but they want to know about it. Do they want a go? Are they scared of going?”
And while McGuinness might not be shy about admitting the thrill that the race brings to racers, there’s another factor that he’s well aware of - one that will protect the race’s future perhaps even more than the racers’ desire to compete there.
“Whenever anybody goes,” he insists, “they're never disappointed. I know people have been on holiday to Ibiza and got a s**t hotel and come home, and said 'that was crap, this was crap', but I've never known anyone go to TT and go 'that was crap'.
“They've all gone ‘wow, the atmosphere, the people, the food, the bars, the whole event’. When a race gets rained off, go and have an ice cream on Peel. It's so good. Same at the North West 200, on the Causeway coast. I've seen kids in pushchairs when I first came here in '94, now they're grown men, welders or brickers or truck drivers.
“The best thing for me, I love when people say thanks for all the enjoyment you've given us over the years. Not the negatives.”
