INTERVIEW: Michael Dunlop on carrying his family’s name and the “wanting to be successful”

“I just go to the TT to win. Being the most successful person comes as a bonus,” says Dunlop. “But obviously Joey’s was really special to break because he was classed as the greatest rider of all time. People thought it would never be broken, so obviously to be the first person to get there is fantastic. Stuff like that is there to be broken. My record will be broken, there’s no doubt about that.”

Dunlop’s laser-like focus on winning races meant he didn’t revel in the moment when he claimed the victory. “I matched the record on the first day. 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.”

A TT week is full-on for Dunlop. Not only does he have to be utterly in the zone when it comes to competing, he also builds his own bikes and engines. “I’m probably the only rider, competitively anyway, that builds his own motorbikes, builds his own engines,” he says. “So for me, there’s a lot going on where most of the other, bigger boys are contracted riders. They all ride for a team or they’ve a generic team that looks after the bike, so they don’t do anything. They just turn up, ride and go again.

“I’m 24/7 building engines, looking after bikes. I’ve got lads looking after them while I’m there, but you’re concentrating the whole time on what needs to be done. So you have a lot more going on than just normal day to day motorcycling part of it.”

Add in the pressures of a day job running his own construction company and Dunlop has little time to enjoy the moment or indulge in his love of riding in his spare time. “The next time I see a motorbike is when I go to an event. I know a lot of boys like motocross and ride bikes and all the time. I’m too busy for that. Any time I’m on a motorbike, nine times out of ten it’s for a race meeting and nothing else really.”

It was perhaps inevitable, given his family’s history in road racing, that Michael would follow that path. As well as World Champion uncle Joey, his father Robert and bother William have all competed in the sport. Tragically, all three have died while doing so. “It’s what you’ve been reared in. It’s my gig. 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.”

While many motorsport protégés start very young now, it wasn’t that way for Dunlop. He was in his early teens before he first sat on a motorcycle. “We just hadn’t the money to do it. 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.”

I wondered whether the family name added pressure to perform, but Dunlop batted that away. “If you can't handle pressure, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen,” he says. “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.”

There’s also sometimes an assumption that a storied surname brings money or opportunity, but in the world of road racing that’s not the case. “I work 9 to 5, I pay my own bills. We don’t get anything given to us. I’m the only person that’s winning races without any factory help. You don’t need factory help. It obviously helps, but it’s not the end of the world where, you know, people just think it’s handed to you.”

Has he ever pursued factory backing? “I would like support with the parts and all that but it’s very money oriented. Whoever has the most money talks, so if I can get some help, great. If I don’t, I’ll just keep paddling my own canoe.”

The more we chat, the more I get the sense that Dunlop’s commitment to racing is rooted in a sense of duty, something he’s here to do. I ask him what keeps him coming back to the Isle of Man. “It’s the wanting to win. 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.”

For Dunlop, the feeling of a sense of achievement from those wins is short lived, however. “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.”

There’s no long-term plan as far as continuing to compete at the TT goes. “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. We’ll see what happens,” he says, before adding poignantly: “Sometimes this job stops it for you.”

He’s a regular at the Goodwood Revival, but it’s the event itself that keeps him coming back rather than the archaic machinery he rides in the Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy. He has short-shrift for classic motorcycles. “I know people ride classics on short circuits, but I don’t. I’d have zero interest in that. Zero interest. They don’t run properly, and there always seems to be a hassle.” 

That said, he has claimed a victory at Goodwood in the past, but he’s here for the atmosphere more than anything. “The Duke [of Richmond] puts on a fantastic event and we are very well looked after. I’m fortunate enough with my TT things that [His Grace] keeps asking me back. There’s nowhere else like this, it’s the whole experience. You don’t get this anywhere else in the world.”

Photography by Joe Harding and Pete Summers.