Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

riB JD Id Illlld, II IDe 1511 By Stephen Burns Photos by Nigel Klnrade ISLE OF MAN, MAY3(}.jUNE 10 m otorsp ort in general seems to have attracted a fair amount of adverse publicity during the first half of 1994, and the tragic events of practice week on the Isle of Man certainly not only put a damper on the subsequent races, but also added further bad vibes to the broad spectrum of all forms of motorsport. On the bright side, there were victories for IT aces Steve Hislop and Joey Dunlop. Even IT stalwarts and hard-liners had to admit that the death of 3O-yearold Irishman Mark Farmer during the Thursday afternoon session had lowered the spirits of everyone involved. Farmer fell from the much vaunted twin-eylinder Britten at the ultra-quick Black Dub section. Additionally, 33year-old Scot Rob Mitchell subsequently died due to injuries which were sustained in the same Thursday practice session that took Farmer's life. To compound matters even more, former World Superbike star Baldassarre Monti suffered serious head injuries in a Friday practice-session crash. Overshadowed by the accidents, practice produced nothing spectacular and no lap records. Hislop returned to the IT after a self-imposed one year sabbatical, admitting that he mainly came back to help finance his World Super. bike effort. Hislop was quickly in the groov e on his Honda Brita in RC45, despite admitting that he was riding the Honda like a street bike. He clicked off a 12353-mph lap to top teammate Phillip McCallen's 121.15-mph lap. An other Irishman, Robert Dunlop, was third on the Medd Racing RC45 at 120.69 mph. These were the only three men to top the 12D-mph mark during practice. Extra interest was tossed on the event by the radi cal Britten V1()()(), with which des igner John Britten w as trying to achieve a longtime ambition to win a mo torcycle race at this "birth place of racing." Sadly, the Farmer incident took a lot of the spark out of the effort. "Mark's accident made us rethink what we were doing here," Britten said. As Farmer would have wanted, the team bravely carried on. FORMULA ONE The last thing the race organizers needed was the farce the F1 race turned out to be. Scheduled for Saturday, June 4, the organizers were aware of the prospect of heavy rain showers around the circuit well before race time. The competitors were advised of this, but most still elected to run slick tires. By the time the leaders reached Glen Helen, 10 miles from the start, the rain was torrential. As a result, nearly everyone pulled in to change tires, while many of the top riders were calling for the race to be stopped. At this point, the Oerk of the Course took no action and the race went into a second lap, at which po int the conditions were starting to im prove. After receiving reports of more bad weather, they elected to stop the race at the end of the second lap. The leader at the time was a virtual unknown in racing circles. Nigel Davies had won the Amateur Manx Grand Prix last September, and could have added a surprise IT victory in his debut ride. Naturally, he was perturbed by the decision to stop the race, feeling that the track cond itions had improved and tha t the decision to stop the race had been influenced by the top teams who were, at the time, all but out of contention. Sunday's re-run had none of the drama or controversy of the previous day's "race" as Hislop totally destroyed the competition. There are three checkpoints on the circuit where times and positions are calculated and relayed to the teams and spectators. These are the start/finish area, obviously, Glen Helen (10 miles), and Ramsey (22 miles). At the first check Hislop was already five seconds clear of his teammate McCallen. By Ramsay his lead was up to 11 seconds, and by the end of the lap it was 22 seconds. And so it continued until the Scot finally won the race by one minute and 23 seconds. Hislop didn't have to lap anywhere near his practice pace, and he admitted that his 10th win on the IT course had been one of his easiest. His 10th victory equalled the number of wins set by Stanley Woods and Giacomo Agostini. "The bike's still not right," Hislop explained. "I am riding it quite smoothly - relatively anyway. I had a couple of wobb les and slides, but I was pleased to make such a quick breakaway from the rest of them because then I knew I had some compromise for mistakes or a bad pit stop. This victory proves to everyone, including myself, that I can still win here. I am really happy because it's probably the first thing we've got right all season, so far." McCa llen also had a re latively uncontested run to second place as he topped the final member of the Castrolbacked team , Jo ey Dunlop, by one minute and 20 seconds. TT veteran Steve Ward appeared to have ridden superbly to third place on a six-year-old Honda RC30, but h is clutch broke towards the end of the fifth lap and he was forced to tour around to finish 16th. That left Dunlop to inherit third place. His state of mind at the end of the race was in turmoil, however, as he learned that his younger brother RObert had been involved in a very serious accident on the fourth lap while lying fourth. Riding yet another RC45 for the Medd Racing Team, the younger Dunlop had just been demoted from third place by the flying Ward and was fighting back when exiting the village of Ballaugh (the location of the famous humpbacked bridge). The hub of the rear . wheel disintegrated and pitched him into a stone wall His right arm and leg

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