During the Isle of Man TT 2017, RST Superbike race, Honda Racing’s Guy Martin unfortunately crashed at Doran’s bend on his first lap. Guy reported that he hit a “box of neutrals” which caused him to berm the kerb and take a tumble.
With Guy Martin pulling out of the Pokerstars Senior TT earlier today rumours have been rife as to why.
Personally I think he knew (and Honda did too) that the bike was not ready to be competitive, but more importantly they have to be 100% sure that everything about the bike is race ready and safe. This was not worth risking.
A lot of work still needed to be done in getting the bike ready and with the massive amount of track time lost to the weather this year it was in my opinion the right call to forget about this one race, and hopefully, focus on the bigger long term picture.
Guy has hinted that he will be at the Isle of Man Southern 100 next month, and I have my fingers crossed he will make a couple more appearances back in Northern Ireland at Armoy and the Ulster GP.
You can see from this interview though that after his spill Guy was visibly shook up.
However Guy did race on finals day and earned himself a 2nd place finish on the Mugen Shinden Roku with his teammate Bruce Anstey taking the win. All 8 TTZero bikes finished this race for the first time and although this class gets an awful lot of abuse, and at the risk of being contraversial – I like it, but they I am a tech guy – it’s going to appeal to me as a default.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjZXaUwYoog]
