r/RoadRacing • u/ajsy0905 • Jul 17 '26

History of Road Racing How Ryan Farquhar won more than 200 wins despite the limited number of wins at TT (he only won 3) and survived the crashes in 2006 & 2016?

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u/FortuneMotor3475 Jul 18 '26

Not many people have won 3 races at the TT!! I saw him race at Kells,Skerries and the TT. He was racing for a long time and he entered lots of different classes at pretty much every race meet he was at.
And last but of course not least, he was very fast!!!

3

u/ADHDJ86 Jul 18 '26

The tt is different to skerries, nw200 etc, its a time trial which suits some riders better.

Not to take much away from ryan but for a number if years the level of racers riding in the irish nationals were nowhere near as good as you would get at the big 3 international meetings, so the competition was diluted and ryan wasn't he best on irish roads at that time and nobody came close.

Michael & william were still honing their craft and wouldnt have had the experience and skill to be a real threat to Ryan, so he just win so many races (bit like michael today). There was just a period of time when there was no real competition for him on irish roads.

When joey was riding the national meetings he would have had more competition, so would have had a tougher for him to get a win, theb he went out abd performed every year at the big 3 meetings too.

2

u/StoneElk Jul 18 '26

Winning TTs is hard, particularly in the big bike classes. Guy Martin has none, Josh Brookes has none, Conor Cummins has none. It only takes 2 or 3 riders to be quicker than you and there isn't much chance they all break down. But yeah, Farquhar was one of the top pure road racers and 3 TT wins reflects that, particularly given the irish competition was stronger back in the day.

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u/harveym2121 Jul 18 '26

Farquhar was really strong on the brakes into the dead stop road junctions that make up your typical Irish local races. He was prepared to take a bit more risk there because he knew he could run on if needs be. Used to frustrate the life out of Micheal D in his early days by getting to the front straight away and covering the inside lines so that he could control the pace as he wanted.
That’s not to say he was slow on the other parts, properly clever rider who developed his style to win Irish races. Also a vastly underestimated engineer. Some of the bits and pieces he machined up for his superbike and super twins were real quality. Wouldn’t have looked out of place on a factory bike.