Tyco BMW’s Ian Hutchinson continues to set the TT 2016 pace and was quickest in this evening’ Superbike practice and is the first rider this year to break the 130mph lap barrier with a 130.626mph lap right at the end of today’s session.
John McGuinness had at the top of the tree with a 129.618mph lap on his only flier while Peter Hickman, in only his second-ever session on a Superbike, was just behind setting a 129.550 but all eyes were on Bruce Anstey as he edged the Valvoline by Padgett’s RC213V-S towards the 129mph mark as Michael Dunlop completed just half a lap, retiring the Buildbase BMW at Lambfell.
Anstey has spent both sessions working on the MotoGP replica and on his first flying lap, the Kiwi set a 128.976 lap and then, on his third, started very fast and was two seconds quicker than McGuinness at Glen Helen, then fastest overall at Ramsey despite being relatively slow through Sulby at 186.9mpg compared to his best of 192.8 today.
At the Bungalow, Anstey was 1.8s faster than McGuinness but then knocked off the pace and cruised over the line to set a 128.852mph lap, giving rise to speculation he doesn’t want to show his cards this early.
Hutchinson’s second fastest lap wasn’t as fast as yesterday, setting a 129.534, just ahead of Conor Cummins on the second works Fireblade. The Ramsey man lapped at 129.120mph for fourth place as Dean Harrison’s 129.022 from a standing start was good enough for fifth.
More in a minute
