Alastair Seeley grabbed pole position in the Supersport class at the North West 200 after posting a lap of 117.160mph in Thursday afternoon’s second qualifying session, shortened from 50 minutes to 25 after Maria Costello crashed unhurt on the entry to the start and finish chicane.
Seeley’s lap on the Mar-Train Yamaha was almost two seconds inside the class lap record and although it was William Dunlop and Michael Rutter that made the early running, Seeley took over at the top with ten minutes to go and held on for the remainder of the session.
He ended up 0.667s clear of Rutter, clearly happy with the Smiths Triumph in its debut outing on the roads with Lee Johnston nipping into third in the closing stages to take the final front row spot for the two races.
Dunlop slipped back to fourth, unable to better his lap of 116.562mph set early on in the session, with Gary Johnson making it a good day for the Smiths team in fifth. Josh Brookes took sixth despite struggling slight with exit speed from the corners.
Keith Amor, Guy Martin, John McGuinness and Dean Harrison completed the top ten and, like the other classes, some illustrious names found themselves outside the top ten most notably Conor Cummins (11th)Michael Dunlop (12th) and Bruce Anstey (14th). Ian Hutchinson will start from 15th after his Milwaukee Yamaha was rebuilt following Tuesday morning’s crash.
Top ten lap speeds
1 Alastair Seeley 117.160mph
2 Michael Rutter 116.878
3 Lee Johnston 116.592
4 William Dunlop 116.562
5 Gary Johnson 116.209
6 Josh Brookes 116.159
7 Keith Amor 115.897
8 Guy Martin 115.743
9 John McGuinness 115.343
10 Dean Harrison 115.254
