Armoy Road Races: Mike Browne clinches treble with victory in Open Superbike race
Mike Browne won the Open race at Armoy following a delay due to rain showers to seal a treble.
The race was declared a wet race by the organisers and reduced in distance by one lap to six laps of the three-mile course.
Browne took the lead from Michael Sweeney on the second lap and from there pulled away on the BPE by Russell Racing Honda in tricky conditions, with parts of the course dry and other areas still wet.
At the half-way mark, Browne was 0.6s ahead of Sweeney (MJR BMW), with pole man Paul Jordan – who opted to ride the Jackson Racing Honda Supersport machine – in third.
Browne stretched his lead to over four seconds after the fifth lap and closed out his third victory of the meeting by 8.8s from Sweeney, with Jordan 16.436s down on race winner Browne in third.
Browne’s hat-trick included a double in the Supersport races.
Jamie Coward finished fourth on the KTS Racing/Stanley Stewart BMW with Ballymena’s Neil Kernohan an excellent fifth on his Yamaha R1.
Conor Cummins finalised the top six on the Burrows Engineering/RK Racing BMW.
Finland’s Erno Kostamo had been running in fourth place on the RVS Motorsport BMW after two laps but slipped off at Church. The Armoy newcomer was reported to quickly up on his feet following the incident.