After three years of disappointment, John McGuinness finally claimed victory at the Classic TT when he won Saturday’s Senior Classic TT race in record-breaking style, the Morecambe rider shattering the lap record on the Team Winfield Paton to win by over twenty seconds from Dean Harrison.
A mixed practice week had seen John quickest on the leaderboard at 110.363mph, his time being set on Friday evening although that session wasn’t without its dramas as he slid off at Quaterbridge on his opening lap. Undeterred, he went back out on the 37 and ?-mile Mountain Course to set the only 110mph+ lap of the week and set himself up for the four-lap race.
Starting at number one, John led at Glen Helen on the opening lap, his advantage over Harrison 1.5s, but the latter took over the lead and held it all the way until the end of the first lap. Indeed, the Bradford rider had set a new lap record of 112.077mph but John was only slightly slower at 112.043mph and there was only 0.3s between them.
Second time around, there was nothing between the dicing duo with the gap never more than a second but from Ramsey onwards, John’s pace quickened and his lap of 113.342mph wasn’t just a new lap record it was also the first ever sub-20 minute lap seen in the class.
It gave him a five second lead at half race distance as he started his third lap and with Harrison pitting for fuel, the gap shot up to over a minute. John opted to pit at the end of his third lap and with only a ‘splash and dash’ needed, he was able to get in and out of the pits quicker than what Harrison had done.
The strategy paid dividends and as they swept through Glen Helen for the fourth and final time, the gap to Harrison was 21 seconds. It was a margin that John was able to control for the remainder of the lap and after being forced to retire in each of the previous three races between 2013 and 2015, he took the chequered flag for his maiden Classic TT victory.
John McGuinness: “We’ve been trying so hard to get the win these last few years so it’s absolutely mega to have finally done it, not just for myself but for Roger (Winfield) and the whole team. There was nothing between Dean and myself to begin with but the pit stops changed everything and the bike never missed a beat. It’s been frustrating having been parked by the roadside each year and when I was sitting on my backside at Quarterbridge last night, I was thinking ‘what am I doing?’”
“I’ve been desperate to win this race and the last few years have been frustrating but today makes up for it and I really, really enjoyed it. We’d changed gearing for the day which worked out for the best and I actually wore ear plugs for the very first time in my career as these old bikes can give you a bit of a hammering! The first lap didn’t feel the greatest but the second felt better and the splash and dash meant I could ease off a bit on the final lap.”
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