Glenn Irwin made it two poles from two at the North West 200 on Thursday as he followed up his record Superbike lap with pole position for the Superstock races too.
The Honda Racing rider put in an early lap of 4’24.671s which was enough to give him the top spot over Alastair Seeley (IFS Racing Yamaha) and Davey Todd (Milenco by Padgetts Honda).
Todd made the early running with a lap of 4’25.999s giving him a quarter second advantage over Seeley with Michael Dunlop (MD Racing Honda), Lee Johnston (Ashcourt Racing BMW), Richard Cooper (Hawk Racing Suzuki) and John McGuinness on the second Honda Racing machine following but on the second flying lap, Irwin went quickest with what would prove to be his pole position lap.
That put him 1.3s clear of Todd with the running order behind the Padgetts man remaining the same, Michael Sweeney, Dominic Herbertson and James Hillier slotting into eighth to tenth.
The middle of the session saw limited activity on track with many riders returning to the pits as dark clouds gathered but gradually more and more riders went back out on to the circuit and Peter Hickman (FHO Racing BMW) was the first to improve, jumping up from 11th to sixth.
Seeley then moved up to second to close to within 0.8s of Irwin and Hickman’s progress continued as he was now fourth with 1.7s covering the top four of Irwin, Seeley, Todd and Hickman.
That was how it stayed with Dunlop and Johnston holding onto fifth and sixth for a second row start. Cooper, McGuinness, Sweeney and Herbertson completed the top ten with some of the expected front runners a bit lower down the grid than they probably would have liked including James Hillier (11th), Ian Hutchinson (12th), Dean Harrison (16th) and Conor Cummins (18th).
