If you’re reading this blog at all, you’re probably into cars. Which means you’ll likely have played and remember racing games like Need For Speed: Underground or the early renditions of the Burnout series.
Enough Suspension of Disbelief allowed you to enjoy the ridiculousness of blur motion graphics, and the seeming ease of holding a triple-digit-speed drift through a city block. For some though, such fantasy isn’t necessary.
Enter: Mark Higgins.
Perhaps not quite as manic as the aforementioned games, but it’s damn close. If you’ve never heard of the Isle of Man TT go ahead and Google it, as the race itself is impossible to describe in just a couple paragraphs.
Nearly as difficult to describe, is Higgins’ flying lap here that reset his previous lap record for the long running race. Watching through the windscreen absolutely ****s your sense of speed, with the telemetry rarely indicating lower than his average speed of 128MPH. At one point, it looks like he’s slowed to walking pace before a glance at the speed shows closer to 80MPH.
There are stretches here that look as though they’d be sketchy at 70MPH, let alone the 170MPH Higgins consistently touches. The car “moves around a bit” as he crest hills with the wheel barely straightened, there’s rarely guardrails in the faster sections, and in many areas the spectators are so close you’d think this was from the Group B archives.
Make sure you watch in full screen and with a good pair of headphones. Higgins himself narrates, and his calm delivery of his approach to the lap is almost as mental as the speed with which he and the Subaru fly through town.
Enjoy!