Dunlop Wins Supersport Race 1 at Isle of Man TT 2026
Rain wrecked half the day’s schedule, but it couldn’t touch Michael Dunlop. Nine Supersport wins on the bounce, win number 34 in the bag, and a 24-second hammering for everyone behind him. Same old story at the TT, and we’re not bored of it yet.
Tuesday at the 2026 Isle of Man TT was meant to be a double-header. It ended up being one race and a long, soggy wait. The plan was Supersport Race 1 at three o’clock, Sportbike Race 1 to close the evening at half six. The Manx weather had other ideas. Heavy rain rolling in off the west of the island binned the Sportbike race after it had already been scrapped once, reinstated, and shuffled to a late slot. So all we got was the Supersport. Lucky for us, the Supersport delivered.
Harrison led. Then Dunlop happened.
For about a lap and a bit, it looked like a contest. Dean Harrison got the better launch on the Honda and was two seconds up by Ballaugh on the opening lap. Anyone who’s watched Dunlop at this place for the last decade knew exactly how that was going to age.
By Cronk-ny-Mona, the gap was gone. Dunlop crossed the line at the end of lap one ahead by a tenth of a second on the Ducati Panigale V2, and from that point on it stopped being a race for the win and started being a procession. The pit stop added another second and a half to his lead. After that he just rode away.
By the flag he was 24 seconds clear. Harrison’s no slouch around the Mountain Course, and he led from the off, yet he ended up the best part of half a minute adrift wondering what he could’ve done differently. The honest answer is nothing. Harrison himself reckoned there are two things making Supersport wins hard for him right now, and one of them, unsurprisingly, is Michael Dunlop.
What it means: 34 and counting
This was Dunlop’s 34th TT victory and his ninth Supersport win in a row. Read that back. Nine straight. He switched to Ducati machinery for the middleweight class last year and it hasn’t slowed him down a jot. The bloke who already sits clear at the top of the all-time TT winners list just keeps stacking them.
It’s a marked turnaround from his Superbike outing on Sunday, too, where a late switch back to Honda hardware left him scrapping for a podium and finishing third behind Harrison and Peter Hickman. Dunlop admitted he wasn’t happy and hadn’t expected to be on the box at all. Give him a Supersport bike he’s dialled in on, though, and it’s a different rider entirely.
Behind the runaway leader
Harrison held on for second. Hickman completed the podium in third, and he earned it the hard way: trouble with his fuel cap in the pit stop cost him more than ten seconds, dropping him behind Paul Jordan. He didn’t panic, reeled Jordan back in by the end of lap two, and was comfortably clear by the finish. Hickman reckoned the fuel cap drama didn’t change the result. Hard to argue when you’ve still got a podium out of it.
Jordan took fourth. Josh Brookes nicked fifth off Dominic Herbertson on the final lap, helped along when Hickman came past and gave the Australian a fast marker to chase. Herbertson hung on to sixth, six seconds back, with Jamie Coward seventh.
Supersport Race 1 – top ten
- Michael Dunlop (Ducati)
- Dean Harrison (Honda)
- Peter Hickman (Triumph)
- Paul Jordan (Ducati)
- Josh Brookes (Suzuki)
- Dominic Herbertson (Triumph)
- Jamie Coward (Honda)
- Shaun Anderson (Suzuki)
- Ian Hutchinson (Ducati)
- Mike Browne (Yamaha)
What’s next
The Sportbike race that got washed out still needs running, and the opening Superstock race is now twice-postponed and stacking up on the to-do list. That’s the TT for you. The schedule is a suggestion until the weather says otherwise, and there’s a lot of racing left to cram into the week. Keep an eye on the road closures and the revised running order, because it’s going to shift again.
One thing that won’t shift: when the Supersport bikes line up again, you’d be brave to bet against the man in the Ducati.
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