One of the greatest Isle of Man wins: Steve Hislop's 1992 Senior TT victory

“Some people would say the handling wasn’t good and I’d agree because we always had to concentrate on the engine,” Symmons explains. “We made a few chassis adjustments, got to the Island and Steve went out on the first evening of practice and was fastest. We thought ‘my God!’. He came back, made some comments and I asked Ron [Williams, the team’s chassis guru] to let him set up the bike the way he wanted it.”

Norton’s main opposition was Honda’s new hotshot Phil McCallen and Carl Fogarty, riding the 0W-01 originally intended for Hislop.

During practice Norton continued to struggle with fuelling: too lean and the engine would overheat and seize, too rich and the bike wouldn’t even make two laps (75 miles) between fuel stops.

“We were always trying to find a balance between fuel consumption, engine cooling and performance,” says Mehew. “You’d pour in a five-gallon drum of fuel and it’d just lick its lips and say thank you very much. It was a fine line: 22 litres [the tank size] for two laps, 11 litres a lap.

“We had two carburettor settings, one I wasn’t confident of, the other I was. So we went testing at Jurby [a small short circuit in the north of the island used by TT teams for testing] and I asked Steve and Robert if they could run the richer setting and they said the lean setting is better. I said that’s not what I asked you. Steve said, ‘You want me to say I can run the richer setting, don’t you?’. And he said, ‘Yes, I can’.

Practice week was cool and showery, F1 race day dawned warm and bright, just what Norton didn’t want. Hislop’s bike was soon overheating and Dunlop went out with a seized engine. Only after the race did Symmons discover that Dunlop had quietly switched to the leaner carburettor setting, thinking it would give him race-winning speed.

Hislop survived to finish second after his mechanics removed the front mudguard to improve cooling. McCallen won the race – his maiden TT victory – after Fogarty went out with a broken gearbox.

Now Norton had six days to get the bike right for the Senior – Hislop had endured more than a few scary moments during the F1 race.

“I was hitting bumps, getting lifted out of my seat and the wind at those speeds was threatening to blow me off the back of the bike,” he wrote.

A taller windscreen and wider handlebars were the solution.

“The Norton’s torque would pull the back down and then the bike would shake its head, it was just an animal,” recalls Nation. “The plus side was the speed – you were absolutely cooking along.”

“There was definitely something about Steve that day”

Nation had huge respect for Hislop’s TT riding ability.

“I know the Isle of Man like my favourite album, but Steve was always so smooth and accurate, that’s where he got his speed from.”

By Friday the tension was huge.

“It was incredible – everything was on for the Senior because we knew it was that or nothing,” says Mehew.

“I wouldn’t say Steve seemed confident but there was definitely something about him that day,” remembers Symmons. “After the F1 I’d slept better, whereas for the previous few weeks my stomach had been in a right state. Running a team at the TT is always nerve-wracking: you’ve got the added strain that when your rider goes off at the start you don’t know if you’ll ever see him again.”

Fogarty set a blazingly fast pace to complete the first lap of the Senior a second ahead. By Ramsey on lap two Hislop had inched into the lead and pushed harder than ever over the Mountain to stretch his advantage to just under three seconds as they came in for their first fuel stops.

Norton were longer in the pits, putting Foggy back in front. “We changed the back tyre in the first stop so we wouldn’t lose time later in case we got into a close dice with Carl,” explained Hislop.

On lap three Fogarty was still ahead, but his OW-01 had gone off song. By the end of lap four Hislop was seven seconds in front.

In the pits, the pendulum swung once again. Fogarty was in and out quickest and by Ballacraine on lap five he was three seconds ahead. Now Hislop started taking bigger risks than he’d ever taken on the Island. Between Glen Helen and Ramsey he made an astonishing seven seconds on Foggy to retake the lead, frightening himself in the process.

“I was riding the bike beyond its limits – I was totally out of control at 180mph,” he wrote in Hizzy. “At that speed, instinct takes over, and for the first time in my life I started thinking that maybe victory wasn’t as important as living. But that soon passed and I got my head down again.”

At the start of the last lap Fogarty was six seconds down but he refused to capitulate. Instead he just went at it harder, unleashing some short-circuit aggression. He had started the race two minutes earlier than Hislop so he crossed the finish line first. Then the waiting began.

“There was a big gap between them, which just heightened the anxiety,” says Symmons. “I was so excited that I pressed the wrong button on my stopwatch so we had to work off the grandstand time. The commentator was counting down as Steve came to the line. We were there with fingers crossed, legs crossed, praying that the bike wasn’t going to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.”

It didn’t. Hislop took the flag with 4.4 seconds to spare, after Foggy had raised the outright lap record to 123.61mph on his final circuit. Norton had won the Senior. Dunlop came in third.

“The race was unforgettable, absolutely engraved on my brain,” says Mehew. “We knew we had that one chance because by then it was obvious Norton had no future. When Hizzy won I don’t think any of us could speak, we were so choked. It’s the only time I’ve ever partied till four in the morning!”

The party was big. “As far as I was concerned I had achieved the impossible,” said Hislop. “I deserved to get drunk, so I did.”

The celebrations began in Douglas’ Round Bar, then continued back at the team’s hotel, as Mehew recalls.

“One of our publicity girls was a very good pianist and Meatloaf was playing at the TT that year, so we ended up with one of his roadies and this girl doing all the Meatloaf numbers on the piano in the foyer of our hotel. It was brilliant. This roadie guy ordered a load of champagne because we were broke by then. Then we had to head for the ferry to go home.”

There was no tickertape parade when the team arrived back at Shenstone to start preparing for the next British championship round. “Norton did nothing for us, not a single thing,” says Symmons. “We were a small team in an organisation that really didn’t want us. Chris and Ron and the mechanics all contributed so much, we were all in it together.”

After the TT, Norton returned to chasing the British superbike crown. Although the future looked bleak the team was still developing the rotary, hoping against hope that they could continue into 1993.

The engine was now very fast and reliable, so it was time to work on the handling, but getting the chassis right for a rotary isn’t like getting a chassis right for a conventional motorcycle.

“The chassis issues were the early delivery and flatness of the torque curve, which made the bike sit down at the rear and forced us into springing for straight-line stability,” explains Chris Mehew. “But then the rear was so hard that just a touch of throttle at the wrong moment and it was gone.”

In 1992 the Norton used a wacky dual suspension system to cope with the power delivery. “The bike had a conventional single shock, then there was another contained spring that didn’t work until two-thirds travel,” Mehew adds.

But something better was needed. “Ann Haslam said we’ve got to fix this thing before someone gets badly hurt. So I sat up all night with a drawing board and then had a big discussion with Ron Williams.

“We’d had three years of very, very hard work but it was heaven!”

“Ron came up with this new system – a rocking arm on an eccentric with tie bars from the top of the swingarm, so at two-thirds travel it was a normal system but for the last third of travel the leverage on the shock increased by about 30 per cent.

“We learned so much from that one thing that we were so excited for 1993. With one more year we’d have climbed mountains.”

But it wasn’t to be. In early 1993 the bailiffs closed for the kill.

“By then we were taking the race bikes home with us every night, so they couldn’t be seized by the bank. One morning we turned up in our van and there was this Russian guard on the gate – the bailiffs wouldn’t let us in. What they didn’t know was that we had what they were looking for in the van! Barry was as calm as calm could be.

“We were all very upset when the whole thing stopped. We’d had three years of very, very hard work but it was heaven!”