Armoy Road Races: Superbike delight for hat-trick winner Michael Dunlop

Dunlop, who set the fastest ever qualifying lap around the three-mile course in practice at over 107mph on his Hawk Racing Honda, took the lead on the first lap after Milenco by Padgett’s Honda rider Davey Todd had nosed ahead off the line.

Dunlop’s advantage after one lap was just under half-a-second from Todd, with Derek Sheils only 0.261s behind in third on his Roadhouse Macau BMW S1000RR.

Dunlop had increased his advantage to 0.62s over Todd after the half-way mark, but the English rider clocked a 108.043mph lap on the fifth lap to reduce the gap to only two-tenths-of-a-second.

Sheils also fired in a blistering lap time on the fifth lap, recording a speed of 108.231mph as he crept closer to Todd’s 2022 lap record of 108.534mph.

Dunlop, though, had some breathing space after the penultimate lap as his lead went out to 1.4s over Todd, who in turn was 1.8s ahead of Sheils.

Mike Browne, fourth for most of the race on the Burrows Engineering/RK Racing BMW M1000RR, was over 10 seconds down on Sheils.

Dunlop held firm to close out his third win of the meeting by 0.704s over Todd, with Sheils holding onto third after losing a huge amount of time on the last lap following an obvious issue.

It was Ballymoney rider Dunlop’s 27th win at Armoy and his 17th in the Superbike class.

Browne finished in fourth ahead of Dean Harrison (BPE by Russell Racing Yamaha R6) and Paul Jordan (PreZ Racing Yamaha).