Saturday, June 3, 1978. The day before the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid. Suddenly, cheering erupts along the pit lane where drivers and mechanics are standing around waiting for practice to start.

The news has just come through that Mike Hailwood has won the motorcycling Formula One TT race at the Isle of Man.

Immensely charismatic and hugely popular, Hailwood had racked up 12 wins at the TT (and nine world championships) before retiring in 1967 to concentrate on car racing. He wasn’t too bad at that, either. He almost won Le Mans and was doing well in F1 until a crash in the 1974 German Grand Prix mangled his ankle so badly that he was unable to drive an F1 car properly again Retired and bored in New Zealand, Hailwood agreed to ride at the TT an amazing 11 years after his last visit. A record number (the highest before or since) of TT fans turned up to watch him and when he won, a spontaneous explosion of joy went up throughout motorsport.

Yet, extraordinary though it was, Hailwood’s is only one of many amazing stories that litter the history of the TT, the most famous race in motorcycling, and to honour generations of heroes, the Festival of Speed is celebrating the centenary with a display of famous bikes.

The TT’s 100 years have been crammed with remarkable achievements, wins against the odds on unsuitable machines, close finishes and wonderful tales of derring-do. Such as how 26-time winner Joey Dunlop, by far the most successful TT rider, won three races in one week in his 48th year when many thought his career was over.

How Stanley Woods, winner of the 1935 TT on a Moto Guzzi, had his team bribe a telephone operator with a box of chocolates to keep a line open from the pits to a telephone box half way round the course so that he could receive signals about his progress.

But there is another side to the Isle of Man TT races. Some 300 riders have died racing on the island. In 2003 David Jefferies, a 30-year-old rider from Yorkshire with an amazing nine victories under his belt, and the TT’s then current superstar, lost control of his 1000cc Suzuki at 160mph on oil dropped by another bike, and was killed instantly.

The TT course is an unforgiving place. The organisers do as much as possible to make it safer, but the fact is that these are public roads lined with houses, stone walls, telegraph poles and numerous other hazards.

Then there are the incredible speeds that the bikes reach. Last year John McGuinness raised the average lap record to 129.451mph. Changes to the circuit over the winter are expected to raise the record to more than 130mph.

The level of bravery required to race here at such speeds is hard for a mortal to imagine. Even when the speeds were considerably lower, to race on the island took enormous guts.

Stuart Graham, who will be riding a 297cc six-cylinder Honda at the festival, rode a similar bike in the 1966 TT races. “It wasn’t the easiest of bikes to ride,” he recalls. “I had an enormous scare on it at a section called Laurel Bank. The surface was very bumpy and I briefly lost control and just grazed the wall with my foot. I thought I was a gonner. Fortunately, while on the wrong side of the road it sorted itself out. Every time I went through that section I remembered that moment.”

For Graham, racing at the TT held an extra twist. His father Les was killed there in 1953 racing an MV Agusta. “It was just another thing I had to put out of my mind, but inevitably a journalist would bring it up just as I was about to start a race, which wasn’t very helpful.”

So what on earth motivates the 400 or so riders who turn up each year to risk death or serious injury on the TT circuit? Until 1976 the TT was a round of the world championships, so professional riders had to race there. Many were reluctant to do so - Barry Sheene hated the place and rode only once in the TT.

But it is not the professionals who make the TT what it is, it is the amateurs. The TT is the last epic motor sport event that is still open to amateurs of modest means. Even the Le Mans 24-hour car race is now out of bounds for nonmillionaires.

An amateur rider of average skill can walk into a motorcycle shop, buy a superbike for £8,000, spend a similar sum on preparing it for racing and within a few years of competing at club level be lining up for the start of a TT race.

The majority of these riders will not be dreaming of victory, because the TT races are like no other motorsport event. Riders leave the start line at 10-second intervals so they are really racing against the clock. Their thoughts, while hurtling down the terrifying Bray Hill at 170mph – a normal stretch of suburban road lined on both sides by houses - will be simply to complete the race, and with luck beat their previous best lap time.

And like Stuart Graham, Mike Hailwood and thousands of riders before, to leave the island, eternally grateful that they have survived the experience.

BIKES NOT TO BE MISSED

1978 Ducati 900 - to be ridden by Steve Wynne The most famous Ducati in the world, which Mike Hailwood rode to victory in the 1978 F1 TT. Being ridden at the Goodwood Festival of Speed by Steve Wynne, the engineer who prepared the bike for Hailwood.

1967 Honda RC174 - to be ridden by Stuart Graham You’ll never have heard anything like this bike. It’s a six-cylinder 297cc machine that won seven of its eight races in the 1967 season. Ridden by Stuart Graham - the only man postwar to win TTs on two and four wheels - who rode works Hondas alongside Mike Hailwood in 1967.

1992 Honda NR750 - to be ridden by Jim Redman A road bike, but one of the most costly and exotic ever made. Honda was showing off when it built the £38,000 NR, which has oval pistons and is full of exotic metals.

Ilmor X1 - to be ridden by Jeremy McWilliams Built by Formula One engine experts Ilmor, the X1 is a homegrown Moto GP race bike that has only had a few races due to budget issues. But that won’t stop the 240bhp racer from stunning the crowds at Goodwood.

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