Martin Jessopp secured pole position for the two Supertwins races at the North West 200 with a lap on the Riders Motorcycles Kawasaki just two tenths of a second outside the lap record.
With glorious conditions on the Causeway Coast on Thursday morning, the Yeovil rider bettered his time from Tuesday and a speed of 109.226mph saw him just over a second quicker than Michael Rutter on the KMR/IEG Kawasaki, his lap being 108.799mph.
Rutter maintained his second place from Tuesday, improving his lap by almost one and a half seconds and he’ll start from the middle of the front row where he’ll be joined by Dan Cooper (KW Electrical Kawasaki) after a late flurry of laps saw the former 125cc British Champion move up the leaderboard from fifth with a speed of 107.910mph.
That relegated last year’s double winner Ivan Lintin (107.881) down to the second row on the Dafabet Devitt Racing machine with Lee Johnston on the second KMR Kawasaki, running in the red Air Ambulance NI colours, down to fifth, his fastest speed of 107.758mph again coming in Tuesday’s session. James Cowton (McAdoo Kawasaki) completes the second row.
The combined qualifying sees an all-Irish third row with Derek Sheils, Adam McLean and Paul Jordan alongside each other whilst 2007 250cc race winner Christian Elkin rounds out the top ten. Michael Sweeney was just outside in 11th but he was an early retirement on Thursday morning, grinding to a halt along the coast road.
