Isle of Man TT star Michael Dunlop in BMW Superbike switch for 2025?

Dunlop won the Superbike TT in 2023 on the Hawk Racing Honda and was on course for repeat victory last year until an incorrectly fitted visor forced him to stop at the beginning of lap five to fix the problem when he held a commanding advantage.

The record 29-time TT winner recorded his fastest ever lap at 135.970mph – a new Superbike TT record and the quickest lap of last year’s TT – as he battled back to eventually finish fourth on corrected time.

Dunlop has strong ties to BMW after riding for the German manufacturer for the first time in 2014, when he famously won the Senior race on the Hawk Racing BMW 75 years after BMW’s last victory in the historic race when Georg Meier emerged victorious.

The Ballymoney rider also won the Superbike and Superstock races in the same year on S1000RR machinery.

Two years later, Dunlop clinched a Superbike and Senior TT double on a Hawk Racing prepared BMW S1000RR in 2016, setting the first sub-17 minute lap of the 37.73-mile Mountain Course and the first 133mph average lap.

Another BMW success followed in 2018, when Dunlop claimed the Superbike TT spoils for Northern Ireland team TAS Racing in emotional circumstances following the tragic death of his team-mate, Manx rider Dan Kneen, in an incident in qualifying.

Dunlop later rode a BMW M1000RR for the TAS team at Armoy in 2021 and won the Open and ‘Race of Legends’ Superbike events, setting a then lap record for the three-mile Co Antrim course at 106.945mph.

This year, the 35-year-old will ride a BMW M1000RR in the Endurance World Championship for Team LPR Poland, with Dunlop set to compete at the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours in April.

The Ulster rider followed a similar path in 2024, competing at Le Mans on a Honda Fireblade for French outfit TRT27 in the Superstock class as part of his preparations for the major road races.

In September, Dunlop said his team had ‘got the best’ out of his Honda Superbike at the TT last year.

“The one we have is all self-built, we don’t have any factory bits, and I think we’ve done a fantastic job,” he said, speaking at a reception at Stormont to honour his success at the TT.

“Steve [Hicken] got the best out of the package and I got the best out of Steve and the package, and we were putting a fantastic show on, but it just didn’t happen [in the Superbike race].

“We broke the lap record in that race and for me it shows that we’re still tramping along. I had the fastest lap in the race and I do think we’d have been quicker in the other Superbike race, but we had an issue straight away [in the Senior].

“I do think we were going to be a lot quicker but we’ll never know, but we definitely put a great package together and we made it work.”

Dunlop tested a Milwaukee-entered Ducati Panigale V2 machine at Jerez in Spain in January.

Milwaukee is a key sponsor of Northern Ireland’s TAS Racing Team, which has switched to Ducati for this year’s British Superbike and Supersport championships, with Rory Skinner and Edoardo Colombi leading the charge respectively.

Last year, Dunlop rode a Triumph 765 at the North West 200 and during practice week at the TT, before reverting to his tried and tested MD Racing Yamaha R6 and winning both Supersport races.

He has relied on an Italian Paton in the Supertwin class at the TT since 2018, winning five races.