The Senior TT was red flagged on Friday after an incident on lap two at the 11th Milestone near Cronk Y Voddy, stopping the race before the leaders could complete the distance. Michael Dunlop had already won two races on the day, lifting his TT wins tally to 36, but the final race on the revised programme never reached its finish.
For anyone searching the Iom TT red flag update now, the immediate answer is that the race changed in an instant. The incident happened shortly before 18:55 BST and brought the Senior to a halt on a day that had already been knocked off schedule by morning road closures being pushed back and a separate non-racing operational matter after the first race.
Organisers said the rider involved was conscious and talking, and was taken by Airmed to Noble's Hospital for further assessment and treatment. The clerk of the course later said there was not enough time to restart before roads were due to reopen at 21:30, which meant the Senior could not be salvaged on Friday even though the field had been stopped rather than pulled from the course in the early morning sense of the word.
That left one of the biggest races of the week in limbo after a sequence of delays that started before 08:00, when a crash on the A18 at Brandywell on the Mountain section of the 37.7-mile course pushed racing back by an hour. The road did not reopen, a formal TT closure came into force at 10:00, the lower section closed at 11:00 and the afternoon schedule slipped again. By the time the Senior was red flagged, the day had already lost much of its rhythm.
The friction in the afternoon was hard to miss: the rider's condition was described as conscious and talking, yet the race still had to stop and stay stopped. That is the reality of the TT, where even a non-serious report in one part of the day can be followed hours later by a race that cannot continue because the roads, the light and the calendar no longer line up. The Senior had been brought forward from Saturday because of the weather forecast, but Friday still ran out of room.
The race is now set to be re-run on Saturday, with Sportbike race two due to follow it. Supersport race two has been cancelled, and Sunday's contingency session will not be used because the weather picture has changed again. After a week already battered by rain, a postponed opening day on 30 May and several shortened or abandoned sessions, the Senior TT will have to wait for another run to find its result.
