Isle of Man TT: Peter Hickman lands famous five podiums

The Louth rider had never made the podium at the prestigious festival in his three previous trips, but his consistent set of results earned him the Joey Dunlop TT Championship with 76 points.

After finishing second in the opening Superbike race and third in the Supersport race last Tuesday, Hickman added a fantastic second place in the Superstock race and third in the Lightweight event on Wednesday.

Heavy rain cancelled the second Supersport race on Thursday, but the weather was fine and dry for the final race of the week, the Senior TT.

Hicky set off fast and was leading on corrected time at Glen Helen. He and Ian Hutchinson exchanged the lead several times during the first lap, with the Lincolnshire rider ahead as they went into lap two.

Approaching the grandstand at the end of lap two, the race was red-flagged for an accident involving Hutchinson on the mountain, and after a lengthy delay the race was reduced to four laps of the 37.83-mile course.

Hicky was not so fast this time and held fourth place at the first checkpoint, but made up ground at Ramsey on lap one to take second place behind eventual winner Michael Dunlop.

Hicky was never in a position to challenge for the lead and crossed the line just over 12 seconds behind Dunlop.

“It’s been an unbelievable week for me,” he said. “The Smiths racing team have worked brilliantly and thanks also to the KMR Kawasaki team in the Lightweight.

“I came here two weeks ago with no podiums and am leaving with five of them; it’s absolutely mega, I can’t ask for any more.

“It would have been nice to have won one as I was leading the Senior before the red flag, but it is what it is and I hope Hutchy is okay after his crash.

“We did have an issue with the clutch so it was a little bit fortunate for us that we could stop and put a new clutch into the bike.

“We did seem to have a lot of spin today and there didn’t seem to be as much grip, no doubt because of the amount of rain we had this last two days.

“But other than that there were not any problems with the bike; it was faultless.

“I’m still only in year four, but I have learnt a lot more this year and we will come back fighting next year.”

Hicky returns to domestic action this weekend at Knockhill in the British Superbike championship. He is lying eighth in the rider standings, but only a handful of points away from the top six who will go through to the end-of-season showdown.