SUBARU IN ISLE of MAN TT

SUBARU IN ISLE of MAN TT

Mark Higgins is on high alert. Any minute now, the British Rally Championship driver will be sent out to attempt a world record lap time around the Snaefell Mountain Course, the 37.73-mile ring of closed-off public roads that turns the Isle of Man into the world's longest racing circuit every spring.Higgins will attempt the lap record in a painstakingly prepared Subaru, the only car that will race around the circuit during the famous Isle of Man TT motorcycle races. But even with a rally-spec roll cage, danger is woven into every curve and rise of the island's pavement. Where it isn't hemmed in by ancient stone walls and crouching houses, the flat-out road course is bordered by steep drops into the sea. Everywhere, spectators squeeze close enough to reach out and touch the windows of Higgins's Subaru, which will scream through most of the circuit in fifth or sixth gear.

To do the task and survive requires ultimate focus. The fearsome route has claimed 246 racers' lives since the first event was held here more than a century ago. The margin of error is nonexistent. Any miscalculation, in any of the course's 200-plus corners, will end in destruction, disaster, and a very real possibility of death.

But "any minute now" has been dragging on for hours. Higgins's record run, originally intended for 11:45AM, has been repeatedly pushed back, first by weather delays, then by a fatal crash in an earlier sidecar motorcycle race. Now it's four in the afternoon. The driver has been anxiously awaiting his turn on the track, electric tire warmers wrapped around the car's racing slicks.

The final motorcycle race of this year's event, the Senior TT, is underway. Higgins is set to make his record run as soon as the last bike crosses the finish line.

The driver tries to put the distractions outside the car far away from his mind. He focuses on the course. Born and raised on this island, he's memorized this legendary route, perfected his technique for every inch of the high-speed course that rings this tiny, racing-obsessed rock in the Irish Sea. He has to have it perfect. Parts of this public road are treacherous at 45 mph. In places, he'll be topping four times that speed.

Then the call comes in. There's been another fatal motorcycle crash—the second of the day, the fourth to occur during racing at this year's Isle of Man TT, and the 247th in the history of the course. Just minutes before he's set to hit the track, Higgins's lap is abandoned, out of respect for the fallen riders and deference to the crash investigation which must now take place.

Higgins's flying lap record attempt in a Subaru WRX STI is a recently-established tradition. Historically, the TT is a bikes-only event. But Subaru is a major sponsor of the annual two-week racing festival, and Higgins, born and raised on the Isle of Man, is deeply respected in the Manx motorsports world.

When Higgins set a 19:56.67 lap in a mostly-stock WRX STI in 2011, the car record he beat was more than 20 years old. He shaved nearly 41 seconds off his time in 2014, for a 117.510-mph average speed around the circuit, again in a caged but otherwise stockish STI.

For 2016, Higgins and Subaru didn't just want to beat their own previous record. They wanted to set a lap time that could qualify among the fastest bikes that run at the Isle of Man TT every year—the 1000cc brutes of the Senior TT.

If you've nearly had a heart attack watching video of an unfathomably quick Isle of Man lap, it was probably footage from a Senior TT. Reigning champion Michael Dunlop just set a record 16:58.254 lap this year, with an average speed of 133.393 mph. These guys ride on the knife edge between fast and out-of-control.

Higgins and Subaru set their sights on a magic number: 130 mph, an average lap speed that would qualify with the five fastest motorcycles in the Senior TT. To achieve it, the automaker partnered with English race car builders Prodrive to make the ultimate Subaru WRX STI road racer: A 600-horsepower beast, powered by a 2.0-liter engine based on Subaru's WRC racing powerplant, with a paddle-shift six speed gearbox, 245-width racing slicks, and active aerodynamics to maximize cornering grip and minimize straight-line drag.

Road & Track's Travis Okulski drove the WRX STI TT Attack in testing, and while a gearbox failure brought his day to an early end, he got a taste of what the purpose-built racer was capable of. On his first lap of the Snaefell Mountain Course in the new racer on Monday, June 6th, Higgins smashed his previous record, setting a 126.9-mph lap average.

Higgins felt that the car still had more to give. But setting a car lap record at the Isle of Man isn't like running around the Nurburgring. This is a motorcycling event, jam-packed with testing, qualifying, and racing that spread across two weeks. The island's weather changes as abruptly and frequently as TV commercial breaks; crashes are frequent, and frequently fatal. Organizers worked diligently to give Higgins and the Subaru team two more chances to run a lap during race week, one on Wednesday, one on Friday. But by Wednesday afternoon, uncooperative weather and a shifting schedule forced race organizers to cancel Higgins's second run.

It's a gray, windblown Thursday morning on Marine Drive, a narrow road clinging to the jagged island coast just south of the Manx capitol city of Douglas. The handful of journalists Subaru has brought to the island are milling around the WRX STI Time Attack race car as Prodrive's crack racing crew dives under the hood. The team is using the closed-off road for final testing ahead of Friday's lap, and they've hit a snag: After a quick blast up the road, Higgins limped the car back on three cylinders.

To pass the time, Higgins is taking us one-by-one on two-way runs up and down the narrow, zig-zagging road in a Subaru BRZ. It's got a roll cage, racing seats and harnesses, and an upgraded rally suspension with remote reservoir shocks. Under the hood? The stock 200-hp drivetrain that everyone tells you is too slow to be fun.

With Higgins at the wheel, you forget the clichéd complaints about horsepower. In addition to his British Rally Champion experience going all the way back to 1990, the man has a movie stunt-driving resume that includes Fast & Furious 6 and the James Bond titles Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. Riding on street tires, the little BRZ slides gleefully through every corner, Higgins maintaining balance with fingertip precision. When the team swaps Dunlop racing slicks onto the blue coupe, it becomes a g-machine, hurling my helmet against the seat's edges with every change in direction.