Michael Dunlop: Latest TT win counters pace doubters

Dunlop beat DAO Racing’s Dean Harrison in Monday’s three-lap Supersport encounter after a thrilling race-long battle, with the former ending up five seconds clear in the end with a new class lap record of 129.5mph.

This marked Dunlop’s 20th TT victory, making him just the third rider in history after his legendary uncle Joey Dunlop and mountain legend John McGuinness to break into 20 win tally.

More impressively is that feat has been achieved on a Yamaha R6 built and run by Dunlop’s own MD Racing team.

“Aye, 20 wins. It’s been good to me,” Dunlop said. “I tell you, I rode hard in that one, it’s good to back again I think.

“People think I don’t have the pace anymore, so it’s good. The wee 600 was going well, I felt good and we just got on with things.

“Yeah, own team, built the bike ourselves, in-house stuff. So, yeah, fantastic. The 600 was running perfect.

“I got caught a bit with the boys in front of me, so I just got my head together and pushed on.”

Dunlop admits he had a couple of moments on the opening lap and says he knew he was going to be forced to push when he saw at his pit stop at the end of lap one that he was up against Harrison.

“Yeah, Dean’s a hard competitor,” Dunlop added.

Michael Dunlop, MD Racing

Photo by: Tony Goldsmith

“We had a couple of big slides on the first lap, I was trying to bed into it.

“Once I seen when I’d come into the pits and saw it was Dean, I was like ‘Oh no, this is going to be some work’.

“To do 129.5mph on a 600 around here, it’s rocking on.”

Dunlop will also race a Honda CBR1000RR in this afternoon’s Superstock race with his MD Racing outfit, which was due to get underway at 3pm.

However, due to an accident at the end of the Supersport race, the Superstock race will now start at 6:30pm.