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TT 2016: Michael Rutter’s Diary - episode two

Wednesday was another day starting off with meeting one of my sponsors, Crowe and Morgan. They're a Manx company who've come on board for the TT so we got a few photos done and generally did some PR work for them.

 
After that, it was straight back up to the paddock to help the lads in the Bathams/SMT Racing team with preparation for the evening's practice mainly cleaning stuff, stickering wheels and making sure all my helmets and leathers were ready.
 
It was another good day weather-wise so I set off in practice near the front of the pack and got two laps in on the Superbike. The first lap was going really well up until the 33rd when I nearly got blown off the Mountain. We'd been pre-warned about the strong winds but it was really bad and it was weird as you were noticing it at strange places like the Crosby jump and Kirk Michael, places where I've never really encountered it before and places you wouldn't expect.
 
That meant my second lap was slower as I was worrying about getting caught out somewhere although it had died down a bit by then. By the third lap, when I'd switched to the Stock BMW it was bad again so I just rode to the conditions accordingly.
 
My second lap on the Stocker felt really good though and 129.2mph placed me second quickest on the night although by the look of things, you'll need to be doing 131s in the race to get on the podium. Michael (Dunlop) passed me on that fourth lap at Laurel Bank and that scared the life out of me and although  Istuck with him for a bit, he gradually pulled away as he was obviously expect as he was on his Superbike.
 
Hutchy had passed me the lap before at Greeba Bridge on his first lap on his Stocker and I have to say he was very smooth and very clean.
 
Once it was all over, we had a major debrief with the team and we had a BMW technician round to look at the Superbike. I'm lapping quicker on the Superstock bike at the moment so we wanted to look at a few things although it could be simply down to different gearing, the different sized wheels etc.
 
It was an early night for me as I was up early on Thursday morning to attend a chat show on the radio and then take some people from one of our sponsors, B&C Express for a lap of the course.

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