Lap record broken three times at the Isle of Man TT by Michael Dunlop & Bruce Ansty but Norton retires with mechanical failure. The Mountain Circuit outright lap record was broken three times during the course of Saturdays Superbike race with Michael Dunlop taking his works BMW to 131.730 mph from a standing start on the first lap of the six lap race. He then pushed the lap record higher still on the second lap with 131.890 mph and had a 20 second lead. Interestingly he had switched from Metzlers to Dunlops just hours beforehand after encountering issues with his BMW which could be seen to be moving around on the TV pictures. Meanwhile cameron Donald on the Norton was not having the best of starts to Race Week after starting strongly and setting a consistent pace around the first lap he was forced to retire on lap two. The on-board footage suggested some mechanical failure but no further information was available at the time of writing. The team now have several days to make mechanical adjustments to the prototype machine before the real objective, The Senior TT on Friday. Bruce Ansty riding the Valvoline Honda had been fast all week in practice but during the race seemed to have lost his way. At one stage he was well down the field on corrected time...somewhere near 15th or even lower. Its not clear yet what happened to fire the experienced Kiwi rider up, but suddenly on the final two laps of the six, he took his bike and wrung its neck for all it was worth. In the process he became the first man to lap the 37.75 miles of TT circuit at over 132 mph. On the last lap he actually averaged 145mph from Ramsey to the Finish Line in Douglas. No matter you allegiances that is really some feat and we here are stunned having seen the footage of his lap. Simply extraordinary. Well done Bruce. In the meantime we are wishing Cameron Donald and the Norton team all the best for the Senior in a few days time.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 01:38:17 +0000
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