The TT Festival gets under way this evening (Friday) at Billown in the south of the island where practising will take place for the Blackford’s Pre-TT Classic.

TT regulars of the calibre of Jamie Coward, NW200 Supertwin winner James Cowton, Ivan Lintin, Mark Parrett and Ryan Kneen will be challenging some of the leading classic racers in the country.

They include Alan Oversby, Mike Hose, Meredydd Owen, Barry Davidson, Chris McGahan and Ewan Hamilton.

One other name to watch could be last year’s double Manx Grand Prix winner Mikey Evans who is making his debut in the event on the Wilcocks Consultants 750 Kawasaki superbike he will also contest the Classic TT upon in late August.

The three-day meeting on the outskirts of Castletown also includes a healthy entry of 26 three-wheelers, many of whom have travelled to the Isle of Man from the near Continent to contest the Manx round of the prestigious Camathias Cup.

Roads round the 4.25-mile public roads course close at 6pm for practising on Friday evening, and again at 12.10pm on Saturday for a further four-hour session including the opening two races.

The solo Singles race will take place at 3.20pm approximately, followed by the first sidecar event at 3.50.

A full day of racing will take place at Billown on Sunday, when roads will close from 1.30pm and until no later than 9pm to enable no fewer than nine races to take place.

There will be a 45-minute break between 5 and 5.45pm.

By then, the opening qualifying session for the TT on the Mountain Course should have taken place.

With the weather forecast looking good until midweek (next week) at least, the main proceedings should hopefully get off to a good start.

The mountain section of the ’TT Course’ will be closed tomorrow (Friday) between 9.30am and 4pm to enable the infrastructure to be put into place for the one-way system. The mountain will be one-way thereafter until Monday, June 11.

On Saturday, roads will close from 4.45pm (Mountain Road from Ramsey to the Bungalow), 5pm (Bungalow to Douglas) and 6pm (the first 23 miles of the course from Douglas to Ramsey).

The newcomers (there aren’t many this year), will be taken on a speed controlled lap from 6.20pm - solos followed some minutes later by sidecars.

There will then be a qualifying session for Lightweight (Supertwin) and Supersport machines between 6.45 and 8.50pm, with newcomers also joining back in.

Similar road closures will be in place throughout each weekday (Monday to Friday) with qualifying sessions for all machines, including sidecars, taking place between 6.20pm and 9pm approximately.

An emergency session has been scheduled in for Friday, June 1 (afternoon), but we are going to remain positive and say that this will probably not be required.

Practice/race reports will be carried in our regular publications - Isle of Man Examiner (Tuesdays), Manx Independent (Thursdays) and Isle of Man Courier (Fridays) over the next fortnight, and on our website - www.iomtoday.co.im - but for more in-depth coverage and a full round-up of all the action, plus features and full results, look out for our dedicated special publication TT News; on sale this Saturday (edition 1), Sunday, June 3 (edition 2) and Thursday, June 6 (edition 3) - each priced £2 - with a final TT News supplement free inside the IoM Examiner of Tuesday, June 12.