Seven races are in the books at the 2015 Isle of Man TT as of Wednesday, with the Lightweight TT and Senior TT races still yet to be ran.
Only two of the five motorcycle TT races so far this week have been won by a rider other than Ian Hutchinson, with John McGuiness winning the TT Zero Challenge and Bruce Anstey winning Superbikes. As for the two non-motorcycle (sidecar) races, the Birchall brothers have proven to be just as dominant, with Ben and passenger Tom taking both wins this week.
Following a comeback victory in the Supersport Race 1 on Monday, Ian Hutchinson picked off right where he left off on Tuesday taking the Superstock race win.
When the sun rose on the island on Wednesday, officiators knew they had a busy day ahead of them, with three races scheduled to run on the 37.73-mile Snaefell Mountain course.
The first of which was a relatively new and unique race to the Isle of Man TT: The TT Zero Challenge – a one-lap race competed on fully electric motorcycles.
With just one chance to get each turn right, John McGuinness led the field away, followed by the rest of the competitors in 10-second intervals. Bruce Anstey took the early lead, the 45 year old having won the Superbike race on Sunday. But McGuinness, a 21-time winner of the Isle of Man TT, wasn’t prepared to give up that easy, and rallied back for his first TT win of 2015 with a time of 18 minutes and 58.743 seconds on his 2015 JM Mugen Shinden.
Less than an hour later, John McGuiness led the field away again – this time for the second Supersport race of the week. James Hillier got off to the best start, but it was Ian Hutchinson who was leading by the end of the first lap on his 2015 Yamaha R6.
Despite two riders being killed on the circuit last week, this week’s races at the TT have been run without a fatality, yet there have been various incidents and injuries around the circuit. The 2014 Senior TT winner Michael Dunlop was involved in such as incident in Sunday’s Superbike race, and decided to compete in Wednesday’s Supersport race despite not feeling 100 percent. However, the 11-time TT winner only made it through one of the four laps of the second Supersport race before bringing his bike into the pits and retiring from the race.
Meanwhile, Hutchinson continued to extend his lead over Bruce Anstey up to 14.820 seconds at the line, dominating the Supersport Race 2 event for his third Isle of Man TT win of 2015 and 11th of his career.
For the third and final Wednesday race, Dave Molyneux and Ben Bins led the field away for the Sidecar Race 2, after having suffered from a mechanical failure on the first lap of the sidecar race on Monday that handed the win to the Birchall brothers. However, the Birchall brothers were keen to copy Hutchinson from Supersport and sweep races 1 and 2 of their respective events. They had a 3.8-second lead over Dave Molyneux and Ben Binns at the end of first of three laps and ended up taking the victory by 7.584 seconds.
Results/schedule:
Sunday:
Superbikes – Winner: Bruce Anstey
Monday:
Sidecar Race 1 – Winner: Ben/Tom Birchall
Supersport Race 1: Winner: Ian Hutchinson
Tuesday:
Superstock: Winner: Ian Hutchinson
Wednesday:
TT Zero: Winner: John McGuinness
Supersport Race 2: Winner: Ian Hutchinson
Sidecar Race 2: Winner: Ben/Tom Birchall
Friday:
Lightweight TT – 3 laps – 5:15 a.m. ET
Senior TT – 6 laps – 7:30 a.m. ET
More information at http://www.iomtt.com/
