Harrison takes his first Senior TT win
The weather was generous for the final race of this years Isle of Man TT considering a fortnight of rain on the Isle of Man, and a forecasted day of rain. The Senior got underway just after 10:00 and was the only race of the day, after other scheduled races were moved to the Thursday, which had better weather.
23-time John McGuinness retired his norton at the Bungalow to end his 2019 TT campaign on the first lap. An opening lap from Hickman of 134.284mph set the astonishing pace that kept Harrison fighting for the win he just lost out on 12 months prior. In Harrisons eyes it was redemption day. Hickman was 2.2 seconds ahead of Harrison entering lap 2. It was looking to be a two horse race however as Cummins, in third, was over 14 seconds behind the leading two at this point.
Harrison brought the gap down to 0.4 seconds at Glen Helen on lap 2, after flying through the sector he is notorious for being quick in. Hickman responded to this by raising the gap to 3.4 seconds in Ramsey however.
Hickman’s run over the mountain was unbeatable, as he took the gap even higher to over 8 seconds heading into the first round of pit stops. The Burton-upon-Trent rider kept the gap rising and looked sure to take his second Senior victory in a row and his 4th victory of the week, then on the 5th lap, disaster struck for the Smiths Racing BMW rider as an issue that had been haunting him during the North West 200 and during some of this years TT sessions came back to bite. A water leak on his bike caused him to back off the pace, allowing him to only use half throttle and having to keep the bike under 11,000 rpm. He nursed the broken bike over the finish line to take 2nd by just over 5 seconds.
Final Results:
| Position | Rider | Gap | Best Lap Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dean Harrison | 00:00.000 | 16:53.704 |
| 2 | Peter Hickman | + 00:53.062 | 16:51.495 |
| 3 | Conor Cummins | + 00:58.879 | 17:04.266 |
| 4 | Michael Dunlop | + 01:26.709 | 17:08.814 |
| 5 | James Hillier | + 02:30.352 | 17:12.148 |
| 6 | Davey Todd | + 02:32.920 | 17:12.983 |
| 7 | Michael Rutter | + 03:03.571 | 17:21.613 |
| 8 | Jamie Coward | + 03:13.561 | 17:22.293 |
| 9 | Brian McCormack | + 03:49.971 | 17:34.468 |
| 10 | Dominic Herbertson | + 04:09.262 | 17:28.162 |
Image Attribution: Metzeler
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