John McGuinness enjoyed yet another profitable day at the 2012 Isle of Man TT races on Wednesday when he added second and fifth place finishes to his already impressive haul of results for the week.
The Morecambe Missile finished second and broke the 100mph barrier in the TT Zero race, for electric motorcycles, and then finished fifth on the Padgetts Honda in the second 4-lap Supersport race.
Poor weather on the Island caused numerous delays to the race schedule and so it was the single lap TT Zero race that got proceedings underway. John was having his debut outing in the class riding the Mugen Shinden machine for Team Mugen and having lapped at over 96mph in the bike's first ever lap of the Mountain Course in practice, hopes were high of challenging Michael Rutter for the race win. In the end, the experience of Rutter's MotoCzysz team proved too much but whilst he won the race, and became the first man to break the 100mph barrier with a lap of 104.056mph, John was only 23.52s behind at the chequered flag having lapped at an impressive 102.215mph.
Later in the evening, John was back out on a more conventional bike, the Padgetts Honda CBR600RR and a solid first lap of 122.817mph saw John lie in fourth place, just a couple of seconds behind team-mate Bruce Anstey. As per Monday's race, positions were close and as the race wore on, John found himself in a battle with Anstey and Ryan Farquhar for the final podium spot. Still in fourth place at half race distance, John was pushed back to fifth on lap three and despite posting his best lap of the race - 124.883mph - on the fourth and final lap, he had to settle for fifth, ten seconds behind third placed finisher Farquhar.
Speaking later, John said; "The TT Zero race was certainly something different for me and to break the 100mph barrier at our first attempt was really special. The guys at Mugen have built a really good bike, they've come here and completed two laps so there'll have gathered plenty of data now and will certainly come back stronger next year. There's plenty more to come from the bike and I was only using 50% of the energy available as the main priority was to finish the race. When I got to the Bungalow, I was able to increase it to 60% and I was whizzing along so perhaps if I'd have pushed the button a little bit sooner maybe we would have been closer. Ever since I first rode the bike at Motegi, I've enjoyed every lap I've done on it so it's nice to get a podium and split the Motoczysz bikes - I'm sure we'll come back next year and have another good go."
"In the Supersport race, I just wasn't fast enough on the day.Conditions were good apart from a couple of damp patches in the usual spots but it's not always beneficial being number one on the road as you don't have anyone to guage yourself against so it can be difficult sometimes to know what pace to go at. I rode as fast as I could but it proved that I was a bit too steady in the early laps and that gave the others a bit of a jump on me. When Cameron (Donald) and Ryan came by, I jumped onto the back of them and was able to run at their pace. I tried my best as always and fifth was where I ended up but that's another three rides on the Padgetts machines and another three finishes so a big thanks to them, they always give me a really competitive machine and I've been able to give them another TT win and more top five results this week. I'm looking forward to the final race of the week now where I'll be looking to end the week on a high note."
John's final race will be Friday's 6-lap Senior race where he once more line up for the Honda TT Legends team.
Picture: Pacemaker Press International
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