Alastair Seeley got the 2015 North West 200 races underway in record breaking style on Thursday evening when he comfortably won the six-lap Supersport race.
The Tyco Suzuki rider saw off the challenge of Glenn Irwin and, aided by a new lap record of 117.077mph, took his 13th NW200 victory by over seven seconds from Michael Dunlop with Lee Johnston in third.
“Fair play to Glenn, he was putting me under a fair bit of pressure in the early stages,” said Seeley. “I’m sure he learnt a lot in those first few laps but I think track knowledge and experience helped and bit by bit I was able to pull away.
“The wee bike worked really well and we’ve found a really good set-up with it whilst the tyres were hooking up perfectly and I had no slides at all. It was really stable, especially in first and second gears exiting the corners, and I just kept ticking off the laps.”
It was Irwin who grabbed the holeshot and the circuit newcomer led into York Corner followed by Bruce Anstey and Seeley but by the end of the lap there’d been three changes in the lead and it was Seeley who now led from Irwin, Anstey and Dunlop. Gary Johnson was a first lap retirement whilst John McGuinness was hit by a ten second penalty for not stopping after overshooting the Magherabuoy chicane.
Second time around and Irwin was really impressing as he outbraked Seeley going into Juniper chicane but by half race distance, Seeley was back in the lead and about to stamp his authority over the race. Anstey still held onto third from Dunlop although Lee Johnston, who’d missed the morning’s qualifying session when his clutch failed, was closing fast. William Dunlop was another retiree though, stopping at University.
On the fourth lap, Michael Dunlop broke the lap record to close to within a second of Seeley as Anstey fell back into the clutches of Johnston but Seeley responded and with a new lap record of 117.077mph, his lead shot up to 2.5s. With backmarkers coming play, he was able to extend his lead throughout the final lap and crossed the line some 7.5s clear to move onto 13 wins alongside Joey Dunlop and Michael Rutter.
Johnston took third from Anstey with Dean Harrison having a lonely ride into fifth and it was Conor Cummins who got the verdict for sixth ahead of Keith Amor as McGuinness, seventh over the line, dropped back to tenth on corrected time. Dan Kneen had been right with them until he retired on the penultimate lap and so it was James Hillier in eighth and Jamie Hamilton ninth.
