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MIKE HAILWOOD FOUNDATION TRIP, ISLE OF MAN
After the Ultralightweight Manx GP this year I was stood outside the beer tent behind the grandstand talking with Mike Hailwood Foundation chairman Adrian Earnshaw MHK. I was reporting on the progress of the riders I’d brought across for the Foundation back in February. We discussed the possibility of running another trip in the November primarily to bring Bret Crossley back over as he’d been unable to compete at the MGP04 due to financial constraints. Nigel John had also approached me during race week as he intends to do the Newcomers in 2005, and I took the opportunity to introduce him to Adrian. So it was decided that we’d organise a trip to coincide with the Joey Dunlop Foundation annual dinner on Saturday 13th November.
Kevin Quirk, the Hailwood Foundation secretary, arranged the flights and hire car on my behalf and I arranged to meet with Nigel & Bret at Liverpool airport for a 10:45 flight on the Friday morning. After the short flight to the Isle of Man we collected the hire car from Mylcreests and headed off for a quick lunch in Douglas, dropped our bags in at the Mereside and set off for our first lap of the TT course from the Grandstand.
I use the first lap as an opportunity to have a look at the circuit again, refresh my own memory and give the guys chance to look at the place, I don’t go into much detail and find it a good time for them to ask questions about different parts of the course etc. Bret and Nigel have both been shown around the course before so they’d got loads of questions to ask.
On the second lap around I build up the information and talk about road position, breaking markers, turn in points and highlight all the marker points around the track. I also emphasise the places that you’ve got to slow down for and discuss marker points to remember them by.
On the third lap, whilst repeating all the information from before, I stress the importance of working particular corners to enable the complex of following corners to be pieced together correctly and safely, and also the flat out sections and places where good drive onto them is very important. I also have rules, which worked for me about how to identify complexes of bends, which is useful whilst trying to learn the course when corners can look very similar on the approach, especially on the mountain section. It doesn’t work for everyone but it can make it easier to ride in the early stages of practice and hopefully safer. I also talk about the correct gear for the corners to help build up the picture of how fast the different sections are taken but there’s little chance of remembering fine details like that!
By now it’s information overload and the lack of light as we descended the mountain made the decision to call it a day for us. We went back to the Mereside to freshen up and went out for some food and a drink.
On Saturday morning we had breakfast and went for a quick coffee with Kevin Quirk, before setting off for a lap and repeating the information from the previous day, by now the guys were talking through the information with me. By the end of the lap they both decided that they’d like to take some notes, so we called into Douglas to pick up some notebooks and grab some lunch.
When we got back out on the circuit I took the opportunity to stop regularly and talk through certain corners in detail starting with Ballagarrey. Walking around the corners and complexes was a great benefit to us all, we spent over an hour and a half in the Glen Helen section alone from Doran’s bend to Sarah’s Cottage.
There we’re a few bemused looks as to why three blokes were stood in the middle of the road with notebooks!! We made it to the 13th Milestone by dusk so we decided to complete the lap from there and pick up again on Sunday, besides Bret and Nigel hadn’t written so much in years and it’d rained for most of the time we were out of the car so we were pretty damp by now!! We continued the lap but called at the Raven in Ballaugh on the way to catch up with some friends. We got back to the Mereside to freshen up and chill out before heading off to the Joey Dunlop Foundation Dinner at the Mount Murray Hotel, which was a brilliant evening and well worth going to, however we did feel a little underdressed!!
On Sunday morning we got up early for breakfast and set off on the course. I talked around the lap to the 13th then made our first stop at Douglas road corner on the way into Kirk Michael. We continued the lap, stopping regularly as far as Ramsey and May Hill. We decided to run back over the mountain to Douglas, as we needed to collect our bags from the Mereside. This left us just enough time to get a final steady lap in before heading down to the airport to catch the flight home.
Although we didn’t get as many laps in as we usually would in a weekend, the work we did was very thorough and both Nigel and Bret felt this was the best way for them to absorb the information, because they both have previous knowledge of the circuit.
The Mike Hailwood Foundation will be running another trip in February for MGP newcomers in 2005. I coordinate the trip from the English side and Norman Gordon from the Irish side. If you are serious about competing and would like to be considered for the trip the please contact either myself or Norman
Mark Castle:
mark.castle@astrazeneca.com
Home- 01270 872942
Mobile- 07990 792073
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