By Phil Wain, BSN at Dundrod
Peter Hickman claimed pole position for Saturday’s Superstock race at the Ulster Grand Prix after an incident at Dawson’s brought out the red flag with five minutes of the session to go.
The Smiths Racing BMW rider called into the pits after just his second lap of the 30-minute session but when he went back out onto the 7.4-mile Dundrod circuit, a lap of 130.871mph put him 1.883s clear of Dean Harrison.
He too spent much of the early part of the session in the pits but his third lap of 129.672mph on the Silicone Engineering Kawasaki saw him depose long time leader Lee Johnston whose flurry of early quick laps saw him lead on the Ashcourt Racing BMW for the first half of the session.
Paul Jordan’s opening lap of 126.572mph on the Dafabet Devitt Racing Kawasaki saw him slot into an early second place behind Johnston but he crashed out, fortunately without injury, at Leathemstown on just his second lap and he slipped back to sixth overall.
Jamie Coward (PreZ Racing Yamaha) lapped at 127.285mph to take fourth place to lead off the second row with Davey Todd (Penz13.com BMW) also getting the better of the unfortunate Jordan.
A good lap of 126.221mph enabled recently crowned Irish Supertwins Road Race Champion Michael Sweeney (MJR Racing BMW) to move up to seventh place and he’ll be joined on the third row by David Johnson (Honda Racing) and Derek Sheils (Burrows Engineering/RK Racing Suzuki).
Shaun Anderson completed the top ten with Conor Cummins finding himself in a lowly 14th place on the Milenco by Padgetts Motorcycles Honda. Michael Dunlop was also a long way down the order on the MD Racing/Carl Cox Motorsport BMW.
