By Six years since he last sped around the uncompromising, mesmerising Mountain Course, Adrian Harrison is enjoying his reacquaintance with pure road racing’s Eden.
Participating at the Manx GP for the first time, since his Mountain Course racing debut in 2012, Harrison twice a top fifteen TT finisher, part of the Harrison racing dynasty alongside dad Conrad, brother Dean, is competing for Russell Brook’s Brook Built Racing team on their potent YZF R6 Yamaha.
Sunday afternoon’s qualifying odysseys saw ‘Adie’ finish seventh on the Supersport/Senior times sheet, with a best lap-speed of 114.747 mph banked, which he admitted he did not expect.
Detailing in depth how opening 2025 MGP action foray’s unfolded, he stated:
“Got to Crosby oil light came on but it was not an oil pressure sensor, then when I went over jump I saw it come on and it stayed on downhill so I turned the bike off, coasted ended up stopping, stopped with the marshal, checked it all over, thought there is no oil leaks, sump plug’s there, not leaking on the floor, bone dry the belly pan.
Turned it all back on again, pressed start, went straight out, revved the engine a little bit listened to it, it sounded sweet, so I thought this is not low on oil because I know he’s put loads in it, watched him do it, so I set off again but I had to wait because everyone’s bombing down there so I lost a couple of minutes. Set off, went back to the pits, spoke to these guys about what went on.
Then after another lap, realised the suspension was far too soft, come back in, adjusted the suspension and went from there.”
“So that’s what we’ve done, we went out and did our best lap on lap three, lap four we went around and we got a little bit of traffic but also the front brake’s got what is called a hans span adjustor, it started adjusting in, felt the front brake, so when I was nipping it I was crushing, I often use all my fingers instead of two for racing.
Once you take your hand off the throttle you’ve got to wind it and go again. So, we are going to sort that, but it works out the spring got tired in the adjustor, it happened to tire on that lap, spin itself in, little things here that do stuff like that, finds the weaknesses.”
Adding how the Mountain Course has altered in specific areas such as Waterworks and Ginger Hall, he said:
“Loads of things have changed, like when you go through Ginger Hall, they’ve took loads of trees out, when I used to go through there it was like a tunnel and they’ve put these boards up now and if you go around the circuit you see marker boards, loads more marker boards, standing out to me but it’s pointing kerbs out to you that sometimes you’ve never actually noticed but they’ve done it on purpose so you don’t hit the kerb, there is a lot more stuff painted, so getting my eye into that.”
Photo credit: Nick Wheeler
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
