Why the Isle of Man TT 'scares the s***' out of one of its fastest riders

While we unfortunately receive regular reminders that motorcycle racing is dangerous, there’s nothing quite as daunting anywhere in the sport as the Isle of Man TT, given the potential for disaster should anything at all go wrong, with even small mistakes punished more harshly than anywhere else.

And while the TT organisers have made huge steps forward in recent years to make the race safer than it’s ever been, there’s one thing that still remains a constant: the fear that the circuit itself can instil, even in those riders who are fast enough to end up on a Senior TT podium.

“I mean, it scares the s*** out of me,” 2024 runner-up Josh Brookes told The Race. “I've never been one to try and be proud and brave or whatever. It's the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. It will always be the scariest thing I've probably done and will do.”

So why do racers keep going back year after year? Well, simply put, because when everything is going well, and when you get into the sort of flow state that only a 37.73-mile circuit can give you, it’s the best feeling in the world, according to the Australian.

“It's probably the highest high I've experienced in anything I've done,” Brookes admitted. “It feels so strange that what you're doing feels so unique. In any given moment, you think, 'I must be the only person doing this,' and yet there are 40-odd other people out there doing it at exactly the same time.

“But it's such a high that you feel like you're doing something out of this world, that you must be the only one. Unless you've actually ridden, I don't think anyone would really purely understand that moment I'm talking of. I still haven't really found words that accurately describe what you're feeling and going through.

“But for something to be so risk-taking and be known to have been so dangerous over so many years, whether it was the risks in the 50s, the 60s, it doesn't make any difference. The best of the best lined up then as they have now.

“The reason we all keep doing it the same way every time, with the same risk, nothing's changing. It's because of that factor. It's that draw and that emotion that it brings that keeps pulling you back.”

That draw in 2026 is perhaps more than ever for Brookes, after a difficult 2025 that saw his first year with the DAO Racing Honda far away from his podium success of the year before - thanks more than anything else, just to the nature of building your season around a single two-week event where lots of things can go wrong.

“Last year wasn't particularly something that I look back on with great fond memories,” he explained. “It's not that there was things that stood out as particularly bad, but just typically with road racing it's not ever smooth sailing, there's always a challenge.

“Even if I look back at my most recent best memory, like the 134mph club at the TT in 2024, all that week was pain and misery with bike set-up, problems, engine failure and different things happening. There were loads of little things that happened, and even some bigger things that happened that we were sort of working through.

“You get to a point where you think it's going to be another one of them years. It's just hard work. And then, as if the planets aligned, everything fell into place and I had a brilliant final race of the week. I did my best ever time, two of the main guys in the race were out, and I got gifted a second place in the result.

“My point is that even the great memories are often surrounded by a lot of pain and misfortune. So last year, sure, I didn't have the great memory, but there was a lot of setbacks along the way.”