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There are few motorcycle racers – or maybe even few professional athletes full stop – quite like Michael Dunlop.
The last of a road racing dynasty, his incredible CV includes 19 Isle of Man TT wins before he even turned 30 – yet he almost runs away from the media spotlight many of his rivals bask in, making it very difficult indeed to avoid the comparisons with his uncle Joey, the most successful TT racer of all time.
As a result, while many of the guys he’s going to be facing off against when racing finally gets underway again on Saturday at the TT have been very much in the spotlight in the two years we’ve gone without the historic race thanks to the COVID pandemic, Dunlop has been largely anonymous throughout.
He hasn’t had an easy run into the TT, either, first with a switch from Ducati machinery to Hawk Racing’s British Superbike-spec Suzuki machinery after a falling out with former team boss Paul Bird and then an eleventh hour change from Dunlop to Metzeler after a spectacular (and incredibly dangerous) spate of tyre failures at the North West 200 two weeks ago.
However, neither of those factors is likely to be the biggest challenge ahead for Dunlop. Rivals like Peter Hickman, Dean Harrison and Lee Johnston have been racing at and winning in British championship competitions throughout 2020 and 2021 at a time when Dunlop has barely sat on a motorbike let alone opened up about his plans to people.
He says that that lack of time spent at speed is going to be his biggest weakness when he gets the famous tap on the shoulder for this weekend’s opening Superbike TT.
“That’s going to be our biggest issue,” he admitted to The Race. “That’s sadly the way things are now.
“Road racing used to just be road racers. Don’t get me wrong, you had BSB boys or World Superbike boys dropping in and out, but for a while it was more about road racing.
“Now it’s turned into more of a short circuit thing with the BSB lads coming and being quite quick.
“Then there’s the likes of Dean who was a road racer but is now doing the BSB championship as well. They’re doing miles where in Ireland we’re a bit more clueless.
“Road racing had dropped at home to a degree but BSB was able to keep going on and those boys were able to keep riding. I was able to drop in to do a couple, but it’s not practical to do a full season.”
That’s in part due to both his upbringing and his family history, as a product not of circuit racing but of the small national road races in both the north and south of Ireland, places with names like Tandragee, Skerries, Kells and Dundrod.
For many years this was where road racers cut their teeth and learned their trade. Dunlop was probably the last TT legend to make his way up through that path as both the number of races and quality of racing there faded away – something that’s been exacerbated by the pandemic.
“When you were at the Irish road races,” he explained, “you could have picked 10 boys that when you went to the TT could probably have won a race. That’s the long and the short of it.
“Now, if you were able to wholeheartedly sit down at your desk and name people from road racing backgrounds, who’s fit to win a race?
“That’s not being disrespectful to them, but that’s where road racing came from.
“I remember 125cc and 250cc races where there could have been 12 winners all dicing for road racing wins in Ireland and then going and doing the same at the Isle of Man.
“It’s changing, but that’s life for you. Things always change, and you either change with it or get left behind.”
Dunlop’s fairly certain that he won’t be left behind when things kick off, though. Unable to be competitive the last time the TT ran in 2019 (pictured below) thanks to pre-season injuries, he’s going in fully fit this time – and while he might not have had too much time on a bike, he’s insistent that so much of winning on the 37.73 mile course comes down to knowledge and experience.
“I don’t think I’m s***e, that’s for sure!” the 33-year-old joked.
“It’s like riding a bicycle and you don’t forget, so all we can do is go and try.
“Listen, everybody is in the same boat. I haven’t done as much riding as the rest of them, all the short circuit boys who’ve been getting laps and that’s fantastic for them – but we’re back onto the roads again where there’s trees and hedges and walls.
“It’s a different aspect of racing, and all I can do is give it a knock.
“The challenge is just the TT. You’re back to riding at 8 o’clock at night with the sun dropping down, changes of tar, a load of different aspects.
“TT just throws up so many different scenarios. It’s going back to getting your head around that old school thing. Riding around with 5000 flies on your visor, riding to the edge of the grass with a million people standing on it.
“You don’t ride around looking through pissholes in the snow because your visor is full of flies when you’re racing at BSB. There are all these aspects which you get used to and don’t actually realise you’re used to until you get back to it.”
That’s backed up by not only his past record but also by the way he’s started to build himself up in the early part of practice week, which kicked off on Sunday.
Not setting the world alight just yet, he’s nonetheless started to build up his speed and remains very much in the mix with the likes of Hickman and Harrison, widely acknowledged as the men to beat.
“It’s been a long time away hasn’t it, flip me, so aye I’m looking forward to it,” Dunlop said just before things got underway.
“It’s the pinnacle of the sport and it’s good to see it coming back. There’s been a lot of changes, they’ve done a lot of work, and it should be getting faster.
“I’d like to try and be fast in everything, like I have been in the past.
“I think some people in the paddock maybe don’t rate me anymore, but I’ve been fast in everything, good in everything, I’ve won on everything.
“The last time I was there I was injured, but my lap times before that were good.
“I did a 130mph lap on my 600cc and I was the first person to break the sub-17 minute lap.
“I understand that the other lads have got some speed, but I’m not slow, that’s for sure, and hopefully everything will drop back into place and I’ll get to the speeds I know I can get to, and further.”
But while he might be going to the TT looking to once again win races, it’s pretty clear that one thing that’s not really on his mind is his place in the record books.
Now only seven wons short of Joey Dunlop’s all-time record, Michael is all too aware of the bittersweet price that comes with TT immortality.
Only 33 years old but already having witnessed uncle Joey, father Robert and elder brother William lose their lives to road racing, he simply wants to get on with the thing that he does best in life: winning.
“I hear about it when I’m out,” he said of his own winning record, “but I don’t think much about it myself.
“It’s one of those things that everybody talks about – ‘oh you should be knighted for what you’ve done and at a young age’.
“But I don’t actually think about it. I’ve got 19 TTs under my belt and I got all of those in my twenties, and when you look at it it was pretty impressive.
“But I always say in this job, you don’t get what you deserve until something happens to you. Then they say ‘well done, he did a good job’.
“People look at it in different ways, but I just want to ride my motorbike and win races.”
