By Erin Baker
Jenny Tinmouth is sitting in the sunshine, chatting about how, aged 36, she is the first female rider in British Superbikes (BSB) and also the current female lap holder of the Isle of Man TT.
‘Our company is going to be the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer’
This year is Jenny’s fourth season in the BSB championship, but her first with Honda Racing, aboard a Superbike-spec CBR1000RR Fireblade. The model has such a successful racing heritage that last year it celebrated its 20th anniversary.
‘It’s ace,’ she tells me gleefully. ‘I’ve always wanted to do Superbikes. I used to watch from the side of the track. It’s the ultimate.’
One-woman band
Jenny completed her first BSB season in 2010 as a privateer, after she left the team she’d started with due to a string of mechanical failures with the bike. She then ran her own CBR600 Supersport.
That must have been tough, I remark, totally in awe of this softly spoken blonde. ‘Yeah, you’re responsible for the logistics, packing the truck, setting up the garage, taking it all down and going to work Monday morning.’
Jenny works as a bike mechanic, and she even painted her bike herself. Nothing seems to faze her. In 2011 she began running her own British Superbike Race Team – Two Wheel Racing – running a Honda under the name of her main sponsors, Hardinge and Sorrymate.com, making her the first ever female British Superbike Team owner.
The world of BSB
How has the world of BSB reacted to a woman in its midst, I wonder. ‘BSB is really friendly,’ she says. ‘You talk to each other. It’s competitive, but in a jokey kind of way. Everyone looks out for each other. They definitely don’t treat me any differently on the track.’
And how about the crashes? MotoGP riders always make it look almost painless. ‘I’d like to say I plan it, but you don’t know where you and the bike are. It’s earth, sky, earth, sky. I did a big high side and I broke both my wrists, ankle and collarbone. I’ve lost a bit of skin here and there… I came off in the second race of superbikes; I told myself to relax and slide. You get used to tumbling.’
And what of the bonkers Isle of Man TT race, where she isn’t the only female rider (Maria Costello races there, and there are more women on the way up) but does hold the lap record.
She broke the record during her first ever TT in 2009, for which she got a Guinness World Record, she then broke it during her second TT in 2010, taking the record to an average lap speed of 119.945mph, and pocketing another Guinness World Record in the process.
The TT is a mad race, set on closed roads full of inconvenient things like lamp-posts, kerbs, postboxes and spectators. How does she manage the course? ‘Knowing exactly where you’re going is the secret to going fast,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to have it in your mind’s eye. Pretty much every corner is blind.’
We talk between her two hillclimbs at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on her British Superbike-specification CBR1000RR Fireblade, with its astonishing 210bhp on something that has a dry weight of just 165kg. What does she make of it? ‘It’s brilliant,’ she smiles. Then she’s off to get back on the bike for the second batch up the hill. What a great woman, and a great ambassador for the world of motorbikes.
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