Mark Higgins was born on the Isle of Man on the 21st of May 1971 and almost exactly 40 years later he became the fastest person to lap the island’s legendary Mountain Course. In a car.
While the Isle of Man TT is well known as a bike race (and o right now!), there have been a select few people mad enough to tackle it in a car.
British rally driver Tony Pond became the first person to average 100mph (161km/h) in a production car when he completed a lap in 22 minutes, 9.1 seconds in a Rover Vitesse (yes, really) in 1990.
Pond’s record stood until 2011 when Higgins (by that time a 3-times British Rally Championship winner) obliterated it in a Subaru WRX STI, shaving more than two minutes off Pond’s time and lapping at an average speed of 182km/h.
Higgins would break his own record in 2014, then again in 2016 with a 17 minute, 35 second lap that saw an average speed of 207.17km/h.
While all of the videos of Higgins' Mountain Course laps are a riveting watch, perhaps the most iconic is the in-car view from his 2011 attempt, where the car gets into a massive tank-slapper at 240km/h on a horrifyingly narrow lane lined with stone walls and quaint cottages.
While the footage shows off Higgins' lightning-fast reflexes, the most amazing thing is the way Higgins casually hooks the next gear like nothing happened while saying “had the biggest moment in my life there” like he was pointing out a roadside attraction, while his co-driver's utterly passive expression remains throughout the entire thing...