Peter Hickman took his second Ulster Grand Prix victory of his career when he dominated Saturday’s six-lap Superstock race eventually taking the chequered flag by almost five seconds. The Smiths Racing BMW rider set the fastest lap of the race to defeat Dean Harrison (Silicone Engineering Kawasaki) and Dan Kneen (Tyco BMW).
“I made a good start and got my head down in the first couple of laps as I wanted to pick the lines I wanted and avoid the few damp patches that are still out there. The Smiths BMW is working brilliantly so I can’t thank the team enough and when everything works as it should, it looks easy – but I can assure you it wasn’t,” Hickman said afterwards.
Hickman led off the line from Harrison and at the end of the lap his lead was 0.642s with Kneen only a further tenth behind. Derek McGee was going well in fourth but over three seconds adrift with Michael Dunlop and Lee Johnston completing the top six.
Second time around and the front three were still close together but Hickman still led by six tenths of a second after lapping at 130.832mph but it was Kneen who was quickest at 130.869mph. Dunlop was now up to fourth though with David Johnson taking over fifth as Johnston held onto sixth.
Hickman stepped up the pace on lap three though and with a lap of 132.284mph, he increased his lead over Harrison to 1.2s who still had Kneen right in his slipstream. Dunlop was in a lonely fourth, now some 4.4s behind race leader Hickman. Johnson was still fifth but Conor Cummins had now taken over sixth.
On lap four Hickman continued to edge ahead courtesy of a lap of 132.770mph but Kneen was now in second having overhauled Harrison. The battle for sixth was raging as Jamie Coward pushed Cummins back to seventh with Johnston retiring.
The penultimate lap saw Hickman’s advantage increase further to 3.8s but Harrison had got back ahead of Kneen with Johnson moving up to fourth as Dunlop slipped back to seventh.
At the head of the field though, Hickman had everything under control and he duly took his second Ulster GP win by 4.6s from Harrison who finally got the better of Kneen. Johnson secured his best ever result at Dundrod in fourth with Cummins and Coward in fifth and sixth.
Dunlop took seventh with Ivan Lintin, Dan Cooper and Daley Mathison completing the top ten.
