Mid Antrim 150: Michael Dunlop sweeps board with dominant five-timer at Clough

Michael Dunlop completed a clean sweep at the Richard King Haulage Mid Antrim 150 for a dominant five-timer with a record-breaking win in Saturday’s Grand Final at Clough.

Making his first appearance at the event since 2009, Dunlop was a class apart on his MD Racing BMW as he led all the way at the sun-kissed Co Antrim meeting and raised the outright lap record for the 3.5-mile course to 115.459mph, bettering his hours-old lap record of 115.100mph set in the Open race.

placeholder image — Michael Dunlop (MD Racing BMW) won the Richard King Haulage Grand Final finale at the Mid-Antrim 150 for a five-timer. (Photo by Rod Neill/Pacemaker Press)

Isle of Wight rider Ryan Whitehall tried to hold onto Dunlop on the first few laps, and was only 0.8s behind the 36-time Isle of Man TT winner on his opening lap on his Suzuki.

However, Dunlop began to turn the screw and stretched his advantage to 2.6s after three laps of the eight-lap finale.

Whitehall lost a lot of time after an apparent mistake, with Kevin Keyes moving up to second place on the Daracore Racing Honda, over 15 seconds down on race leader Dunlop.

With Dunlop having things all his own way, Whitehall fought back to haul himself up to third for a well-deserved podium.

Dunlop – whose tally of Irish national road racing wins now stands at 144 – clinched his fifth victory of the day by 27.813s from Keyes, who was just under six seconds ahead of Whitehall.

Joe Loughlin finished fourth on his BMW with Neil Kernohan (BMW) and Barry Furber (Scott Racing Aprilia) rounding out the top six places.