Alastair Seeley has dominated the mostly-wet opening day of the 2015 Vauxhall North West 200 free practice, setting the fastest times in Superbike, Supersport and Superstock classes with James Hillier leading the Supertwins.
The Carrickfergus man set a Superbike lap of 4’53.639 to be 3.737s faster than GBmoto Kawasaki’s Gary Johnson, whose team are making their debut at the event this year. Johnson lapped at 4’57.376 with Lee Johnston third on a 4’59.293.
“A good start to the week for us, and all the bikes are working well,” said the 12 times North West winner smiled afterwards.
“The conditions were good the whole way around for the last session, and I was just chipping away – I managed to come in, make some changes and get a few more laps done at the end. It was hard to get a clear lap with all the traffic but I was able to get a clear road and pull some seconds out of times.”
Dean Harrison was fourth, just ahead of Ian Hutchinson and John McGuinness finished in sixth place, 8.4s off the pace. Former team-mate Michael Rutter was seventh with the Dumnlop brothers next along, Michael in eighth. Guy Martin, on the Tyco BMW, completed the top ten.
In Supersport, it was again Seeley at the top of the tree with a 5’10.384, 1.911s faster than Michael Dunlop with William Dunlop third, 3.481s off the pace. Gary Johnson, on the Mar-Train Yamaha was fourth and NW200 rookie Glenn Irwin fifth.
Seeley ended up 4.281s faster than Michael Dunlop in the Superstock class, which was run on a drying track. The Tyco BMW man lapped in 4’32.953 with Dean Harrison third. Horst Saiger was fourth with William Dunlop fifth.
Hillier edged out Ryan Farqhar by 0.065s to top the Supertwins with Jamie Hamilton third, Michael Dunlop fourth and james Cowton fifth.
