Michael Dunlop has scaled his own Everest but TT's most successful ever rider has no plans to take his foot off the gas

​Dunlop took over from his legendary uncle Joey to ascend the throne in the TT’s hall of fame, winning four races for the second consecutive year around the Mountain Course to set a new benchmark of 29 victories.

The Ballymoney man equalled Joey’s tally of 26 wins – which the revered Ulster sporting great achieved with a final hat-trick in 2000, weeks before losing his life in a tragic racing accident in Tallinn, Estonia – with victory in the opening Supersport race on his MD Racing Yamaha.

Dunlop was then on course for victory in the Superbike race until an issue with his visor forced him to stop at the top of Bray Hill to make adjustments, blowing his lead of almost half-a-minute.

He dropped to fourth position, with a new Superbike TT lap record at 135.970mph on the Hawk Racing Honda providing scant consolation.

However, the 35-year-old didn’t have long to wait to set the record straight, with Dunlop securing an historic 27th success in the first Supertwin race a few days later on an Italian Paton.

He added further victories in the second Supersport and Supertwin races to wrap up a fourth career TT quadruple after Dunlop also claimed back-to-back four-timers in 2013 and 2014.

An issue with his Honda Superbike ruled him out of the Senior TT finale on the first lap, but just as Joey’s history-making 15th win in 1993 when he surpassed Mike Hailwood’s record of 14 victories has become an indelible milestone of TT folklore, Michael’s feat in 2024 will be talked about long after many of us have departed this mortal coil.

With time still on his side – Joey was famously 48 when he sealed his last treble in 2000 – Dunlop will surely add to his haul.

“Within road racing I’ve sort of done what’s been said on the tin, but obviously winning for me is still a massive high or I’d be going nowhere,” he told the News Letter.

“Obviously the TT is the main goal – to beat Joey’s record – and that’s where the main focus was. For me it’s great because a lot of people focus on stuff in life and maybe don’t ever get there.

“A lot of people will do domestic championships to try and be successful and win them, but I wanted to win most of my TTs at a certain point in my career and I’ve done that.

“All my pressure all through my career has always been self-inflicted and that’s been because I’m always pushing myself to that point of ‘I want to be that person’, not because somebody else – a sponsor or somebody in the public – has said ‘he can’t do this or that’. It’s always been self-inflicted pressure.”

Dunlop had to wait a full year after giving himself a chance of equalling Joey’s 26 TT wins in the Senior race in 2023, when he finished third behind Peter Hickman and Dean Harrison.

He began to wonder if it was ever meant to be broken when almost certain victory was snatched from his grasp in the Superbike race after the problem with the visor on his Arai helmet, which hadn’t been fastened properly during his second pit-stop.

“With the Joey thing, obviously before 2023 it was hanging on me a wee bit, just with what happened,” he said.

“So then to get to 25 wins – we’ve all seen everything that has been written at the time – I knew that there was something that I needed to achieve.

“To break it wasn’t public pressure and people wanting it, it was myself – I wanted to break it.

“Obviously the [Superbike TT] race on the Sunday didn’t help things after equalising [Joey’s record] on the Saturday, and on Sunday we should have broken it.

“You were sort of thinking is this ever going to happen? So the next race I was in [Supertwin] was probably the hardest race I’ve ever been in for a long time, to come down from leading that Superbike race by 30 seconds, because it was well and truly in the bag, to then being at the side of the road trying to put a visor on.

“I wouldn’t have minded if it was something of the team’s fault, it wasn’t, that’s third-partied out to a company that is there to do those jobs, so to have that taken out of your hands you’re thinking ‘this record maybe doesn’t want to be broken’.

“But it came the next time and we put it to bed and pushed on.”

Dunlop, whose TT success was recognised at a reception at Stormont during the week, said his plans for the future remain unaltered, with the Mountain Course maestro prioritising the TT above all else.

“The main focus is the TT and everything around that is just about flowing here or there and making a plan,” Dunlop said.

“It’s like everything in life, it’s finance regulated and I’ve got some good sponsors behind me, but we’re always trying to push that next level.

“If we got some support factory-wise it would be great, or if we got some more support sponsor-wise it would be great to make the job easier.

“You have to keep an eye on things because obviously we hit the goal, but sometimes you have to spend extra money that you probably shouldn’t to get there – especially me anyway – and this year having to build two 600s wasn’t the most practical thing on a finance level.

“But when you’re stuck in the moment and you want to break a record you just spend. We just need to tighten the reins a bit and work forward.”