From a press release issued by Plummer Menapace, Pirelli’s advertising and public relations agency:

PIRELLI’S FINAL ISLE OF MAN RECORD: SWEPT TOP SIX PLACES IN EVERY MAJOR TT; TOP 20 PLACES IN SENIOR TT

Also Dominated WERA National Endurance and Challenge Races At Fontana With Five Podium Sweeps

(Rome, GA) Pirelli came to this year’s Isle of Man TT with an enviable record to beat. Over the past two years, its racers have dominated every TT they entered, sweeping the top positions and shattering records along the way. It would have been a serious accomplishment to simply echo those achievements for a third straight year; it would be the stuff of dreams to better them. The dream came true.

When all the results were tallied at the 2004 event, Pirelli tires had swept the top six positions in every TT its racers entered (which means all of them except the 125cc and sidecar events), and the top 20 places in the event-ending Senior TT. They also broke two more lap and race records.

It didn’t matter which bike – Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki. It didn’t matter which rider – Adrian Archibald, John McGuinness, Bruce Anstey, Ian Lougher, Mark Parrett, Jason Griffiths. Pirelli’s latest generation of slicks and DOT Supercorsa tires simply owned the world’s best-known test of performance, endurance, punishment, and, this year, rain.

TAS Suzuki’s Adrian Archibald received the Joey Dunlop Award for best combined finishes in the Formula One and Senior TTs with his second- and first-place finishes in those races that open and close the week-long annual meet. But the way John McGuinness and his Yamaha R1 won the opening Formula One race – by demolishing the IOM top-speed record by over five seconds – and then going on to win two of the next three races – the Lightweight TT (400cc) on a Honda CBR400RR and the Junior TT (600cc bikes) on an R6 – McGuinness began as the odds-on favorite to be the week’s hero. In fact, given his early success, McGuinness admitted that a run for the unprecedented five-win record might be in the offing. It wasn’t to be. Ryan Farquhar won his first-ever TT, putting his Kawasaki ZX6RR on top of the box in the 600 Production TT, the first Kawasaki to win an IOM final in many years, while McGuinness finished third after mechanical problems cost him his early race lead. Then came a DNF mechanical that took him out of the Senior TT after building yet another commanding lead with average speeds in the 127+mph range – Archibald, last year’s Senior TT winner, biding his time in second.

New Zealander Bruce Anstey, another multi-win Isle of Man veteran and Archibald’s TAS Suzuki teammate, won the 1000cc Production TT on his GSX-R1000, beating, who else, McGuinness. (Anstey also took seconds in the Senior and 600 Production TTs.) Both McGuinness and Anstey annihilated the lap and race records for the 1000cc TT, McGuinness breaking it by over six seconds on the opening lap. But Anstey went even faster over the 37.7 mile mountain road course in 18 minutes, 5.7 seconds at an average speed of 125.10mph. In his earlier Formula One victory, his fourth Isle of Man win, McGuinness had crushed the existing overall record by over five seconds with a new top average speed of 127.69mph on Pirelli 16.5-inch slicks.

There was some fine stateside road racing last weekend as WERA made one of its new WERA West series forays to the California Speedway. And Pirelli racers again came away with some very impressive results in both the National Endurance and National Challenge races.

Vesrah Racing, the reigning WERA endurance champions, rode their Pirelli-shod GSX-R1000 to the win in the six-hour race, beating the Army of Darkness and re-taking the points lead from them.
Pirelli racers also swept the podiums in five National Challenge events – some of them five deep – just missed a sixth sweep, and captured two additional victories. In Open Superstock, Tray Batey, Mark Junge, Matt Furtek, and John Jacobi gave Pirelli the top four spots. Batey again led a Pirelli podium sweep in Heavyweight Twins Superstock, with Roger and Myron Bell taking second and third respectively. It was Batey again, twice more. He led a top-five Pirelli sweep in Formula One, and five of the top six in 750cc Superstock. Teenager Nicky Moore, on a new GSX-R600 that he and his dad had just finished building, was the first of five Pirelli Supercorsa riders across the line in 600cc Superstock, led another sweep in 750cc Superbike, and followed them with a win in 600cc Superbike, giving him three victories for the weekend.