Three Races Today

We had our grandstand seats on the first row and watched the "TT Zero" class which is the electric bikes.  Last year this was won by the Motoczysz bike produced in Portland, and they were back again this year with two bikes.  Their main competition was from a Mugen bike called the Shindin.  Mugen has always been a sort of proxey for Honda and it was said that Honda spent 4 million dollars on this bike.  It is pretty well known that Honda is working on an electric bike for public sale, and a win would give them a jump start on publicity.  Well, they had the best time in practice and were leading the race until the very end, when the Motoczysz passed them on time.  Hooray for the USA!  However, only one of the two Motoczysz finished.  The average speed of the winner was almost 110 mph.  This was a one lap race and it was sort of strange to watch as there was very little sound from the bikes. 

The next race was the Supersport class, which included 600cc fours and 675 cc triples.  I swear there were also some Ducati twins in the race but they were not listed in the entry.  It was won by Michael Dunlop.  It was a four lap race and required refueling after three laps.  The refueling happened right in front of us and was fun to watch. 

 

This race was won by Michael Dunlop.  Being a four lap race, we got to watch them come through the start/finish straight at full throttle and they were screaming.  Top speeds in this area were around 150 mph. 

 

After that race we walked about a mile down to Quarterbridge to watch the action in a slow turn.  The race we watched there was the sidecar race.  Carolyn got some good photos with her telephoto lens in this area.  Here are a few:

 

 

 

 



 

The result of the sidecar race was an upset in that the many time winners, Dave Molyneux and Patrick Farrance were beaten by the world sidecar champs Tim Reeves and Danial Sayle.