Michael Dunlop’s brutal honesty: “Sometimes this job stops it for you”

Michael Dunlop insists he doesn’t plan his career long-term, in response to queries about his Isle of Man TT future.

Dunlop became the most successful rider in TT history this year, winning a 29th race.

Poignantly he beat the 24-year record of his uncle Joey.

Dunlop’s uncle, father and brother have all died in road racing accidents but he has no plan to stop yet.

“It’s the wanting to win,” he told Goodwood about why he continues.

“It’s certainly not for anything else. It’s the wanting to be successful, especially around there, because nobody cares about any of the wee races at home any more.

“The TT is the be all and end all, that’s what everybody looks for. So you want to be successful.

“We don’t have time to think. We’re straight back to work, then get ready for the next meeting and then go again.

“It’s a vicious circle of just work, work, work, but that’s the way it is. You just have to batter on and get on with it.

“I don’t really think about anything further forward than five minutes. I just think at the moment and what will be will be after that.”

So, how long will Dunlop keep racing at the TT?

“We’ll see what happens. Sometimes this job stops it for you.”

Nobody knows about the tragedies in road racing better than Dunlop.

But his legendary family history meant his career path was inevitable.

“It’s what you’ve been reared in. It’s my gig,” he said.

“It’s a bit like if your father’s a butcher, the son ends up a butcher. We were motorcyclists. You just don’t think you’re ever going to be anything other than that.”

But unlike today’s generation, Dunlop was a teenager before he even sat on a motorcycle for the first time.

“We just hadn’t the money to do it,” he explained.

“My dad was working and doing his own thing and then, until we got to a stage where you could do your own thing and pay your own bills, it was sort of late to get going.

“A lot of them now are starting when they’re three or four years of age.”

Being a Dunlop in the road racing community, eyeballs are constantly on the TT record-breaker.

“If you can't handle pressure, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen,” he claimed.

“We’ve all got pressure, it’s how we deal with it.

“Carrying the Dunlop name meant it was probably inevitable that I had to break the record. Don’t get me wrong, there is pressure on to do that, but that’s my job. That’s what I needed to do and we got there.”

Dunlop might have even won an extra race at this year’s TT but a bizarre issue prevented him.

He was spotted, pulled over to the side of the road and removing his gloves, to fix an apparent visor problem.

“I matched the record on the first day,” he remembered.

“I should have broken it on the second day, but we missed out. So, we still had four or five days more racing [and] obviously I had more races to get involved in.

“That was all that was on my mind at that time.”