Michael Dunlop has made amends for missing out on this morning’s Superbike TT by taking his 30th win at the Isle of Man in the Supersport race.
In the process, he handed Ducati its first victory in 30 years at the historic event - delivering what turned out to be a textbook Dunlop victory over Dean Harrison and outsider bet James Hillier.
It was Harrison, not Dunlop, who led for most of the race. Strong out of the starting arch as we’ve come to expect from the Honda Racing rider, he held onto the lead throughout the first lap and both into and out of the pitstops at the end of it.
With the race shortened from four laps to three thanks to a weather warning for high winds due to arrive on the island at 1700 - something that the riders reported as the right call after the race - Harrison looked to have more of a match for Dunlop in the class he’s more familiar with than he did in the earlier superbike race.
However, Dunlop got going properly on the final lap, first cutting down Harrison’s advantage at the first timing point at Glen Helen, taking a slender lead of a tenth of a second at Ballaugh, then pulling clear over the second half of the lap to eventually take victory by a comfortable 10 seconds.
“The first race was a nightmare,” Dunlop said afterwards, “what with things going wrong with the bike, and I was disappointed so I wanted to get stuck in in this race. It’s another win, another one for me on another manufacturer.
“Because of the lack of practice, we’re still doing changes in the pits, which is impractical. It shouldn’t be the case, but with the lack of lap time it’s all we can do. It was a wee bit like the superbike race where I had to take a bit of time to ease into it, and Dean came out of the traps well but we got there.
The win is a first for the Ducati since Rob Hodson won the Singles TT class on a Supermono 30 years ago in 1995.
Despite losing out again, Harrison ended the race content, admitting that he thinks there’s more to come after battling both technical problems and the weather on the last lap.
“I went faster from the start and stuck in,” he explained, “but the wind affected me quite badly and I got a leak at the end of lap three. I was slipping off the right hand footpeg a little bit, which didn’t help, so I just sort of brought it home.”
Behind the pair, it wasn’t the expected Padgett’s Honda of superbike race winner Davey Todd but rather the Bournemouth Kawasaki of James Hillier that took the final spot. Forced to build his team from scratch only weeks ago following the collapse of OMG Racing, it was an emotional return to the podium for him for the first time since 2019.
Results
1 Michael Dunlop, MD Racing Ducati
2 Dean Harrison, Honda Racing UK
3 James Hillier, Bournemouth Kawasaki Racing
4 Davey Todd, myCOOLMAN by Padgett’s Motorcycles Honda
5 Joshua Brookes, Jackson Racing powered by Prosper2 Honda
6 Rob Hodson, SMT/VRS Recovery Yamaha
7 James Hind, North Lincs Components Suzuki
8 Dominic Herbertson, HRRC / Gilbert Brown & Son Ltd Ducati
9 Ian Hutchinson, moobob / UGP Yamaha MLav Racing Yamaha
10 Conor Cummins, Burrows Engineering / RK Racing Ducati
