The day started, as ever, at my local Shell garage, topping up the tank and driving as slowly to the port as possible, conserving as much as fuel as I could for the few days over there. The Isle of Man Steampacket takes around 2h 45m from Liverpool to Douglas and it’s about what you’d expect, but sailing past the front of my house is a nice touch!

We stayed at the Comis Hotel just outside Douglas, a lovely spot but on the expensive side; it was Manx TT build up week, so they’ve got you…

The first morning as a little misty, but what can you do. You can’t control the weather, so we set off for some exploratory runs on the roads, but it was too misty to really put your foot down until later in the afternoon. So, coffee it was.

In the afternoon it cleared and boy, was it worth the wait! The mountain road was still a bit misty at height, but the other roads, lower done. They. Were. Awesome. The Emtron KV12 Traction Control was .. epic! You can just hear it pulling some timing back in the video below. It was relentless. And the CANTCU controlled ZF8HP70 was superb up and down the gears, it made the pace effortless.

On the last runs of Thursday, up the north west side of the island, the bottom part of the rear wing decided to leave the chat at north of 140mph, and the bottom part decided it still liked me, but it was flapping too much for comfort! Off to the hotel, some hand tools I’d brought and off it came. It left the rear of the looking a little odd!

Fair play to Rival Worx, though. The issue was reported and a fresh wing, under warranty was made and sent out. They stand by their product. It was just one of those things. At least it never caused any other damage, other than to my sphincter.

This brings us on to the main issue with the Isle of Man. Fuel! Weak 97 RON and no E85. Nightmare. And considering the 3.4 at 2.1bar does love to consume fuel, it wasn’t ideal. Especially around 7-8000rpm. The full tank I brought from home lasted a day and a bit. So you’ll either need a standard car, or something that has the secondary maps for 97RON. There’s a resonable supply of fuel on the island, the bigger stations are near Ramsey and Douglas, but you will find them sporadically placed around the island and the price is comparable to home.

I think I’ll be bringing some octane booster with me next time. Given the VP Racing Octanium Unleaded will treat 38 litres of fuel per bottle, and improves by 7 points, I’ll probably end up putting 1.5 bottles in per tank full.

It’ll probably cost £100 extra over the course of a 3-4 day trip, but I don’t get to have 914whp on pump let loose than often! And on an engine build like this, protection is something you absolutely want.

Also, I’d just want to point out the new wheels, with Continental Sport Contact 7 tyres. Not as much outright grip as the A052, but it meant I wasn’t finding religion every time we found a little piece of damp or wet roads. A brilliant all round tyre, and ideal for extended trips where you might encounter some inclement weather.

The final morning was a couple of runs through the Mountains, and going back for the final one as a passenger in Eddie’s 718 Cayman GTS4.0 in Jewish Racing Gold, we found the road was closed. We waited for 35 mins before it was time to go back to the hotel, get our bags and head to the ferry to come home.

Isle of Man, we’ll be seeing you again. Soon. Very soon.

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