THE Fairy-tale TT

The dust might only just be settling on this year’s epic TT, but we want to take you back to 2017 and one of the most magical wins around the Island ever. To a Senior TT victory that could, and maybe even should, have gone very differently. It’s time to talk about Michael Dunlop and the Hawk Suzuki GSX-R1000R…

- BIG MAC

It’s still hard to get my head around the fact that here we are on the cusp of another season of long sunny days and dry tarmac, and for the first time since 1986, there isn’t a high capacity GSX-R in Suzuki’s range. The GSX-R 1000 which took over from the 1100cc behemoth as the company’s range topping ‘Halo’ sportsbike in the year 2000, is no more. It’s become the latest victim of increasingly tough emissions regulations and falling sales in the sector.

I’ve been lucky enough to have ridden every single version of the GSX-R1000; from the bombastic K1/K2 to the much better K3/ K4, the game changing K5/K6 and then the ones that most people forget about... right up to the final version with the variable valve timing and full electronics pack – the ‘L7’ which was introduced in 2017 and which we say goodbye to in 2023.