Bruce Anstey ended Michael Dunlop’s dominance of qualifying for Saturday’s Ulster Grand Prix with the veteran taking pole position for the two Supersport 600cc races, his speed of 125.944mph seeing him finish ahead of Ian Hutchinson and team-mate Conor Cummins.
It was Hutchinson who went to the top of the leaderboard on the first flying lap, his speed of 123.016mph seeing him take an early lead from Michael Dunlop and Dan Kneen but second time around it was William Dunlop who took over the top spot with a lap of 123.655mph. He only held the top spot for seconds though as Anstey went quicker at 123.825mph.
The Kiwi was clearly enjoying life on the Valvoline Racing by Padgetts Honda and he continued to get faster as the 30-minute session wore on, lapping at 124.778mph on his fourth lap and improving further still fifth time around to 125.944mph. Hutchinson had briefly got ahead of him with a speed of 124.901mph on the CAME/BPT Yamaha but Anstey’s near 126mph lap gave him a 1.7s advantage and with rain falling towards the end of the session, the red flag came out to bring it to an early end.
Dan Kneen was as high as third in the early stages before dropping back and it was Anstey’s team-mate Cummins who eventually took the final spot on the front row with a lap of 124.530mph, 2.4s behind Anstey. Dean Harrison took fourth, the only other rider to lap in the 124mph bracket, with William Dunlop and Peter Hickman rounding out the second row.
Michael Dunlop dropped back to seventh with Kneen also slipping back, this time to eighth. Gary Johnson took ninth, despite only posting three laps on the injured Lee Johnston’s Triumph, with Paul Jordan, none the worse for his spill in the preceeding Ultra-Lightweight race, in tenth.
Rain began to fall towards the end of the session and it was red flagged due to an incident at the Flowbog where John Walsh had crashed, suffering a broken arm.
