FEATURE
MADE AT THE MANX
At 99 years old, the Manx Grand Prix has long been a part of the road racing landscape, essentially serving a dual purpose: as either a stepping stone on towards the TT Races, or simply to fulfil their dream of competing on the Mountain Course.
Of course, many riders have also gone directly to the TT – Mike Hailwood, Joey Dunlop and John McGuinness amongst them – but the list of riders who’ve stepped up the TT after competing at the Manx is rich in both quality and quantity. Indeed, many TT greats have been ‘Made at the Manx’.
The idea of a second event on the Isle of Man was first mooted in 1921 with a request made by the Manx Motor Cycle Club to hold a one-lap race for amateurs during that year’s TT Races. It was immediately dismissed by the ACU but the MMCC weren’t put off easily and whilst defining who or what an amateur was caused lengthy discussion, by 1923 approval had been granted.
That year’s event, titled the Manx Amateur Road Races (MARC), saw a single 5-lap race take place with the bulk of the entry made up of 500cc machines. Len Randles was the overall winner with Kenneth Twemlow in second also the first 350cc to finish.
Randles repeated his victory the following year but Twemlow immediately moved to the TT in 1924, winning the Junior Race at his very first attempt and so becoming the very first rider to win at the Manx and then the TT. He wouldn’t be the last.
At the time there was nothing stopping competitors from entering both the TT and the Manx but that eventually changed with race winners no longer eligible to compete. For them, the options were simple; either move up to the TT or cease competing on the Mountain Course.
That ruling proved to be a good incentive for riders and ultimately laid the foundations for the Manx Grand Prix – which replaced the MARC title in 1930 – being a breeding ground for TT stars of tomorrow.
Early winners at the Manx included Tim Hunt (1927), Harold Daniell (1933), Freddie Frith (1935) and Maurice Cann (1937), and all four would go on to win at the Isle of Man TT too. That trend continued for the rest of the century.
The legendary Geoff Duke became one of the most famous riders to win at both events. Indeed, in the space of 12 months, he won the 1949 Clubmans TT, the 1949 Senior Manx GP and, as a works Norton rider, the 1950 Senior TT.
Bob McIntyre and Phil Read were two of the next high-profile riders to win at both meetings, McIntyre’s win in the 1952 Junior Manx GP followed five years later by victory in the Senior and Junior TT Races, the former seeing him set the first ever 100mph lap of the Mountain Course.
Read didn’t have to wait five years and, like Twemlow, won the TT at his very first attempt. Having made his Manx GP debut as a 19-year old in 1958, he won the 1960 Senior and a year later, claimed the number one spot in the Junior TT Race.
Of course, back then, the TT was part of the World Championship so for a rider to win at the Manx and then become both a TT and Grand Prix winner more than showed the value of riders learning their Mountain Course trade at the September event. It may have been dubbed the ‘Amateur TT’, but the riders it was producing most certainly weren’t.
No one was able to match Read’s feat for 21 years until Norman Brown won the 1981 Newcomers Junior Manx GP and then the Senior TT the following year, but the twenty years in between saw the conveyor belt of talent emerging from the Manx continue.
Malcolm Uphill took a Manx Junior-Senior double in 1965 and went on to take back to back Production TT victories in 1969 and 1970, whilst Alex George (1969 Lightweight) and Charlie Williams (1971 Lightweight) also enjoyed Manx GP success before having stellar TT careers.
The list of names is too long to list but Alan Jackson, Eddie Roberts, Sam McClements, Phil Mellor, Steve Ward, Bob Jackson, Rob McElnea, Geoff Johnson and Con Law were other names to emerge from the Manx GP in the 1970s whilst the advent of the Newcomers Race in 1978 further helped both the development and emergence of Mountain Course talent.
The 1980s saw no slowing down in that trend and whilst the Newcomers Races over the years produced many a future star – multiple TT winners Phillip McCallen, Carl Fogarty and Adrian Archibald amongst them – the 1983 race is the one that’s been spoken about the most even to this day.
Newcomers Races prior to then had seen Mellor, Brown and Gary Padgett victorious but although it was Ian Newton, another future podium finisher at the TT, that was quickest in practice it was the second man on the Junior leaderboard that would win the race – Robert Dunlop.
Dunlop took command of the race on his 350cc Yamaha from the off and eventually won by 1m2.6s, but in second and third place were two more riders who would also become TT greats – Steve Hislop and Ian Lougher. Between them, the trio would take a staggering 26 TT wins and 61 podiums and while many other championships and series around the world have produced many racing legends, perhaps there is none more so than that 1983 Newcomers Race.
Fogarty’s sole Manx Grand Prix victory came in the 1985 Lightweight Newcomers Race with McCallen winning the same race three years later and as we moved from the 1980s to the 1990s, Ian Simpson, Simon Beck, Mick Lofthouse, Jason Griffiths, Nigel Davies and James Courtney all either won or were on the podium at the Manx before doing the same at the TT.
As expected, Northern Ireland were well represented and the likes of Courtney, Archibald, Ricky Mitchell and Adrian McFarland all started out at the Manx before they progressed to the TT. And when Mitchell did Senior-Junor double in 1996, he did so with lap times that would have got him into the top six at that year’s TT. Only injuries sustained in a practice crash at Bedstead in 1997, when the bike jumped out of gear, prevented Mitchell from having a fine TT career.
Richard Britton was a Newcomers Race winner in 1997 and two years later it was the turn of Ryan Farquhar; the McAdoo Racing Kawasaki rider returning a year later to win the feature MGP Senior Race. Three TT wins and 13 podiums would follow for Farquhar as well as more road racing wins than any other rider.
Over the years though, the sport has changed considerably and the gulf in speed between the Manx and the TT has widened. In 2002, there was just 5mph difference in outright lap records at the two events but that’s now stretched to more than 12mph and although many riders continue to step up to the TT after contesting the Manx, such is the competitiveness of the TT that it is arguably harder than ever to progress to the sport’s premier event and become a race winner.
It seems unlikely that we will ever see a rider win at the Manx one year and do the same at the TT the next – as Read and Brown did – but that hasn’t meant future TT winners have stopped emerging from the Manx, albeit not as frequently as they once did.
The two most recent are Ian Hutchinson and Michael Dunlop, with two of the greatest TT riders of all-time starting life on the Mountain Course at the Manx.
Hutchinson, a good friend of nine times TT winner David Jefferies, made his debut in 2003 when he emphatically won the Senior Newcomers Race with a best lap of 116.66mph. Not only was this a new class lap record, it was also fastest lap ever recorded by a newcomer around the 37.73-mile circuit, ironically bettering Jefferies’ lap of 115.52mph set during the 1996 Senior TT.
Dunlop, meanwhile, made his debut at the Manx in 2006 when aged just 17. Riding a 125cc Honda and with father Robert guiding him, Michael set a best lap of 105.349mph on his way to winning the Newcomers C Race. He then led the Ultra-Lightweight race later in the week before retiring and lapped at more than 112mph in the Junior on his 250cc Honda.
From small acorns grow big trees and since their Manx GP debuts, Dunlop has racked up 21 TT wins and 31 podiums with Hutchinson’s stats not far behind at 16 and 27 respectively. The duo are the third and fourth most successful solo TT riders of all time with both, like many before them, made at the Manx.
They are the most recent winners at both events with the late James Cowton the most recent MGP victor to then go on and take a TT podium, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, but earlier this year local ace Nathan Harrison proved that it’s still more than possible to make your mark at the TT. After starting out at the Manx, the 2019 Senior and Junior MGP winner took a superb tenth place and lapped in excess of 128mph in the Senior TT.
Will we see another winner progress to the TT from the Manx Grand Prix? The competition is as fierce as ever, but you never know where the next road racing superstar will emerge from…
