Tag

Guy Martin

Browsing

The late evening practice sessions have finally given way to the mid-day races at the Isle of Man, and that means that the 2014 Isle of Man TT has started in earnest. As always, the Dainese Superbike TT was the opening event, which is just the perfect way to start the TT…with the big toys on the Mountain Course, right?

This year’s event brings all sorts of questions. Will Michael Dunlop continue the domination he began back in 2013? Or will John McGuinness reclaim his crown, and make further progress into besting Joey Dunlop’s outright TT race win record? How about fan favorite Guy Martin, and his hunt for his first Isle of Man TT race win? Thankfully, some of those answers can begin to come forthwith.

More rain has gotten in the way of the Isle of Man TT’s practice sessions, as Wednesday evening’s events came to a halt after only one lap around the Mountain Course. With rain hitting a few spots of the course, and an incident at the top of Barregarrow, Clerk of the Course Gary Thompson had no choice to but to call the night’s events to an end as the rain increased.

The incident at Barregarrow involved newcomer Laurent Hoffmann, who was airlifted to Nobles Hospital, and is reported to have leg injuries as a result of the crash. By the time that crash had been cleared, Mother Nature turned up the waterworks, and that was the end of things.

It seems Guy Martin, the barely understandable, though immediately lovable road racer of Isle of Man TT fame will compete in the 2014 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. One of the stars of the Isle of Man TT, and perhaps the fastest man on the Mountain Course who has never won an IOMTT race, Martin’s involvement with “The Race to the Clouds” has been a long time coming.

The organizers at the PPIHC have long been trying to get riders and teams from the Isle of Man TT onto the Pikes Peak road course, in an effort to bolster the race’s international appeal and reputation, as well as breathe new life and interest into the historic American race.

Our sources say a special effort was made to lure Guy Martin, who was the centerpiece personality in the Isle of Man’s Closer to the Edge film, and it seems those efforts have finally paid off with this latest news.

After 24 hours of racing around a tiny historic track in France, the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle endurance race, and final round of the 2013 FIM Endurance World Championship has finally come to an end. A race of attrition, SRC Kawasaki claimed the top podium step, followed by Suzuki France’s Team R2CL (which was blessed with the addition of Guy Martin for the event), with Yamaha France – GMT 94 – Michelin Yamalube rounding out the final position.

The conclusion of the 24 Hours of Le Mans also means that the 2013 FIM Endurance World Championship rankings have been settled, with the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (SERT) clinching the Championship, yet again, despite the team’s disappointing 26th place finish overall in Le Mans. Second in the Championship is the Yamaha France – GMT 94 – Michelin Yamalube squad, with SRC Kawasaki closing out the top three spot, for the four-round championship.

Guy Martin, the affable TT racer from Lincolnshire, will be expanding his motorcycle racing horizons this year by competing in the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Mans. The final stop on the FIM Endurance World Championship, Le Mans is a bucket list event for any fan of motorsport, and clearly ranked high on Martin’s list of racing accomplishments as well.

Entering into the iconic motorcycle endurance race with France’s R2CL Suzuki team, Martin got his EWC ride with help from Tyco Suzuki Team Manager Philip Neill. The sometimes-understandable TT personality will join other top TT riders on the Le Mans EWC grid, such as John McGuinness, Michael Rutter, and Simon Andrews of the Honda TT Legends crew.

When it comes to turning the contract season into as arduous of a process as possible, the MotoGP Championship is king. The silly season seems to stretch from Qatar to Valencia, and we’re sure that if we checked at the time of this posting, we could find some intrigue for contracts in 2016. Oy vey.

That’s not how Guy Martin rolls though. If you didn’t know that the truck mechanic, and sometimes TT racer, beats to the sound of his own drum, well…then you probably didn’t know jack about the man from Lincolnshire to begin with.

It seems Martin is just starting to get wind of this whole internet thing, and found out that people were talking about him on it. This lead to his revelation that people were also talking about where he was racing for the 2014 season, and that just did not sit well with Mr. Martin.

Putting rumors to a dead-stop, Guy took matters into his own hands. Long story short, he’s with the TAS Suzuki boys (and girls) for next season, and believes he’ll be on the necessary package to find his elusive first Isle of Man TT race win.

If you don’t speak mouth-full-of-marbles, you might have to watch the video after the jump more than once — it might be the best contract announcement we’ve ever seen.

It’s hard to out-do King Kenny, the godfather of Ameircan road racing, but Valentino Rossi is certainly making a go at it. For those that haven’t been to Roberts’ ranch out in Modesto, California, the three-time GP Champion and AMA Grand Slam winner has a very lovely flat-track course in his backyard, where he teaches the rich, and coaches the fast.

Well, the idea must have struck a chord with nine-time World Champion Valentino Rossi, as The Doctor has built his own race course outside of his home town of Tavullia, Italy. Rossi’s proving ground isn’t just some ordinary oval though, and instead is an undulating circuit that can be configured a multitude of ways.

Playing host to fellow Dainese-sponsored riders Guy Martin (of Isle of Man TT road racing fame) and Thomas Chareyre (the current Supermoto World Champion), Rossi and friends spent a day riding together while the cameras were rolling. This is how the super-rich and super-fast spend their weekends. It’s a good life.

The first solo bike race of the 2013 Isle of Man TT, the Dainese Superbike TT race features 1,000cc superbike fours (1,200cc twins), which complete six laps around the Isle of Man’s Mountain Course. A prelude of things to come during the TT’s blue-ribbon event, the Senior TT, the Superbike TT boasts all the top names on the fastest machinery, and typically is the opening race for the IOMTT.

Other than the profound experience of being at the TT for the first time, my time on the Isle of Man was also unique in that I knew the photographs I was taking were for the express purpose of being used in a book. Throughout the fortnight, there was a fair amount of photos that I would mentally earmark to make an appearance in ink and paper form. The above image was one of them.

As I have mentioned before, the premise of my book project was originally centered on Guy Martin. Even after four events of no podium finishes and the Senior TT getting canceled, I still loosely held onto the original topic and continued to document Guy as much as I could which included his post-TT interviews.

The stage was set for Guy Martin to take his first ever TT win in 2012, with the popular fan favorite returning with the same team with which he scored four podium finishes in the previous year’s contest. Top-level crew, competitive machinery, and one of the fastest men to ever lap the Mountain Course teaming up again for another assault. Reaching the top step of the podium should be all but a forgone conclusion — or at least in theory.

What resulted instead was truly a week to forget, starting with Guy getting nudged off the podium in the opening Superbike race when his crew was unable to change his rear tire for the final two laps. The first Supersport race ended prematurely after his engine gave out, forcing a retirement into the pits, after just a single lap. The Superstock race that followed was barely an improvement, with Guy taking an anonymous eighth place finish, after being off the pace from the start. Further engine problems in the second Supersport race again saw him off the podium, finishing down in fifth. To cap it off, a final shot at a good result was thwarted by the first ever cancellation of the Senior TT race. Things did not go according to plan, to say the least.