Peter Hickman claimed provisional pole for the Ulster Grand Prix Superbike races with the Smiths Racing BMW rider lapping at 133.560mph on Thursday afternoon ahead of Saturday morning's single lap, Superpole session.
The Louth-resident’s 133mph+ lap was the fastest of the week so far and placed him just over half a second clear of Dan Kneen who put in a late flyer of 133.186mph on the Tyco BMW to push Bruce Anstey back to third, just ahead of his Padgetts Honda team-mate Conor Cummins.
It was William Dunlop who set the early pace though, not only going quickest with a lap of 132.606mph but also recording the first ever 200mph speed at the Dundrod circuit, with 200.4mph through the speed trap.
After 15 minutes of the session, he’d been pushed back to fourth as Hickman posted his aforementioned 133mph+lap to go quickest with Anstey’s lap of 132.776mph only marginally quicker than Cummins’ speed of 132.651mph.
The majority of the leading runners pitted mid-session as the leaderboard remained fairly static although Michael Dunlop (Bennetts Suzuki) did move up to fifth after lapping at 132.369mph. Brother William was later reported as a retirement though having stopped at the Hole-in-the-Wall.
Anstey set a couple of quick sector times before losing time in the third and final sector but towards the end of the session he did improve slightly from 132.776 to 132.948mph but it wasn’t quick enough to hold onto second as Kneen became the second rider to lap in the 133mph bracket.
Hickman remained out of reach at the top of the leaderboard from Kneen, Anstey, Cummins, William Dunlop and Michael Dunlop, all six having lapped at more than 132mph.
Dean Harrison lapped slower on his Superbike than what he had done in the earlier Superstock session to place seventh with David Johnson, Derek Sheils and Jamie Coward rounding out the top ten.
Lee Johnston in eleventh was the only other rider to lap at more than 130mph but he retired at Wheelers with 20 minutes of the session still remaining.
