Police have confirmed they are making inquiries into claims by TT rider Guy Martin that he drove a sports car around the Mountain Course at speeds of up to 180mph.

Guy test drove a £203,000 Aston Martin Vanquish Carbon Edition, which has a top speed of 200mph, for a review in the Sunday Times Driving magazine and joked: ‘Take off two wheels and I could set a TT record in it!’.

He claimed during his early morning circuit on open roads, he clocked 180mph down Sulby Straight, a restricted stretch of road, and completed a lap in 22 minutes.

Inspector Derek Flint said: ‘We are making some enquiries.’

In his review, Guy says:

‘I got out of bed at 5.30, leaving time to do a lap of the TT and get back to the hotel. As soon as I passed Union Mills, on to a section with no speed limit, I thought: “Right, let’s have it.”

‘About 17 miles into the lap there’s a corner called Ballacrye, a fast left out of the village of Ballaugh.

‘I just got around it with the accelerator flat to the floor. There’s a jump after the corner, and the car was off the ground, all the lights flashing on the dash telling me everything was dropping off. It fishtailed when it landed, but there was so much feedback from the Aston I felt totally in control. I saw 180mph down Sulby Straight, one of the fastest sections of the course, and the car wasn’t even in top gear.

‘I hadn’t been trying to set a time; I’d just wanted to see what the car would do on a road I knew well and it was something like a 22-minute lap.’

Adrian Darbyshire