Back in 1991 the most exotic prototype four-stroke racing motorcycles took part in the punishing Isle of Man TT races. Bertie Simmonds reports…
Two very special RVF750s were given to then TT legends Steve Hislop and Carl Fogarty to race around the punishing 37.73 mile Mountain course.
In some respects, the bikes were the four-stroke equivalent of the-then two-stroke 500cc grand prix bikes, or like today’s MotoGP machines. Whatever they were, they were light and powerful. Their V4 engines produced around 165bhp (20-35bhp more than a well-sorted RC30) while they weighed just 130 kilos – some 30-35 less than an RC30…
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Many felt they may be a bit of a handful around the TT course, but they were shipped in to spoil Yamaha’s 30th anniversary celebrations.
Hislop would ride the bike in both the Formula 1 and the Senior, while Fogarty would head to a world superbike race late in race week, so Joey Dunlop would ride it in the finale. Hizzy knew that Honda and HRC’s expectations were high. “There was a lot of pressure on Carl and me that year, because Honda wanted to make sure they won the Formula 1 TT, giving them 10 F1 wins in a row,” Hislop said in 2002. “They didn’t care which one of us won it, but one of us had to. The bikes were so much faster than anything we had ridden there before.”
Of course, getting two such competitive racers at the height of their powers meant that both were trading fast laps and scaring themselves silly during practice: check out the stress on their faces in the inset shot! Things got so bad that HRC’s Yoichi Oguma sat both down to get them to make an agreement over who would win the race. It fell on deaf ears.
While fastest laps were traded between the two in practice, in the race, the big face-off never materialised with Hizzy gaining an advantage on lap one and catching Carl on the road, hence this great shot of the two from journalist, author and photographer Mac McDiarmid.
Steve would win the Formula 1 race and then take the Senior ahead of Dunlop on Fogarty’s vacated RVF. If you want to read the full story, then you need to get Island Racer 2026…
· Island Racer 2026 is brought to you by the team behind CMM and Classic Racer, this year’s issue looks at the modern and historic magic of the world’s number one road-racing event. The magazine costs £9.99 and is available to order from: https://www.classicmagazines.co.uk/product/island-racer-2026
