tuesday

Isle of Man Tourist Trophy 2009

It's time once again for the IoMTT, the Paris-Dakar of roadracing (ie: intense, fast, dangerous, sometimes people die). The first practice sessions begin on Saturday 5/30. The all-electric TTXGP, a brand new class (no fossil-burners allowed) added for this, the 101st IoM, will run on Friday 6/12, the same day as the SeniorTT (the real race). Both will run on the Snaefell Mountain Course which is made up of 37 miles of public roads circling the Island - closed to traffic for the TT, of course - with average speeds on these two lane country roads being in the triple digits. The course record, set in 2007, is an average speed of over 130mph. No foolin', these racers are 75% balls and 75% crazy (crazy doesn't have to follow the rules of math).

Update - 23 September, 2009: Embedding of this video has been disabled by the uploader, but it's really good so go watch it HERE.

This clip is from the 2003 Sidecar portion of the TT and gives a good idea of what professional motor racing is like on narrow, bumpy, stone-walls-at-the-edge-of-the-pavement public roads, both town and country. At 2:51 when the announcer says "Oh! He was almost in the pub!" that's not a quaint britishism for crashing, the sidecar was almost scraped off the bike by an actual (open for business and full of drunken motorheads) pub. All motor racing used to be like this. Now only this is like this.

Some Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IoM_TT

Official Site: http://www.iomtt.com/tt-2009.aspx