Fast Bikes|December 2016

Mark Higgins is a Manxman who has broken lap records at the TT. Unlike most, however, Mark gets to compete on four wheels – but that doesn’t make his feats any less impressive. 128.730mph in his specially built 600bhp Prodrive Subaru was a staggering achievement – and he reckons there’s still more to come from it…

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On my quick lap I can tell you that there was a lot of concentration going on.

We were talking about the heart rates of us as drivers compared to riders earlier, and with me it’s not the physical exertion that puts my heart rate up, it’s the mental effort I have to put in. We’ve been monitoring my heart rate and it’s been up at around 155bpm while I’ve been going round sat in my seat.

It’s been such a pleasure to drive round the course in these conditions.

Our top speeds aren’t much more than what we had when we last had a crack at this in 2014, probably up by around 4 or 5mph, but the car now is so planted. It just does what Want it to do, and it improves every time we go out.

We did some tweaks to the car over the TT.

We had some over steer on the first day, then a bit of understeer, so we’ve had to put bit of work into it to get the speeds up.

The TT track makes quite a special special stage.

When you drive round the course normally you think that there aren’t that many corners, but you start adding speed to it and suddenly there are an awful lot of turns. It gives you the biggest buzz you’ll ever get in your life –it’s certainly the biggest one I’ve had.

The twisty and bumpy stuff is good for us.

Denne historien er fra December 2016-utgaven av Fast Bikes.

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Denne historien er fra December 2016-utgaven av Fast Bikes.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

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