Ivan Lintin claimed his best ever Superbike finish at the Isle of Man TT races when he took an excellent eighth place on the Dafabet Devitt Racing Kawasaki ZX-10R in Saturday’s six-lap race, also setting a new personal best lap of 128.672mph.
With good conditions all week on the island, the Lincolnshire rider had enjoyed a good week of practice on all bikes around the 37.73-mile Mountain Course with a lap of 126.821mph placing him 19th on the Superbike leaderboard.
However, both he and the team were confident of improving upon that in the race and, sure enough, an opening lap of 127.218mph saw the 33-year old cross the line in 15th place. The hot weather of practice week had given way to cooler, cloudier conditions and it suited Ivan well as a second lap of 128.176mph enabled him to jump up to 11th place.
A superb pit stop by the team got him back out in double quick time and by the end of lap three, half race distance, he moved up into the top ten as he held onto tenth place. Another 128mph+ lap on lap four, 128.114mph, saw him climb further up the leaderboard into an excellent seventh place and another good pit stop meant he consolidated his position.
The final two laps looked like they would see Ivan finish in seventh but although a flying lap in excess of 130mph by Martin Jessopp on lap six pushed him back to seventh, the Bardney rider set a new personal best lap of 128.672mph to secure a brilliant eighth place, bettering the tenth he took in the 2016 Senior race.
“I’m over the moon with eighth place today and also with my personal best lap so it couldn’t have gone any better really. I got settled into the race and caught Sam West and Shaun Anderson in the early stages, opening up a bit of a gap over the both of them and I had no issues at all during the race," said Lintin.
"I saw a pitboard at Sulby which said ‘+10’ so when Sam came back past me on the final lap, I thought it was him that was behind me and not Martin so I could have maybe pushed a bit harder on the final lap and be sitting here now with seventh. I’m really happy with eighth though and it’s a great start to the week.”
