Isle of Man TT blog: Gary Johnson a worthy winner in re-scheduled Supersport race

Gary Johnson was a worthy winner in yesterday’s re-scheduled Supersport TT on the East Coast Construction Honda. He had a great run to Glen Helen on the first lap to make up 3.2s on John McGuinness and then just added three seconds in each timing sector to Ramsey and had a comfortable nine seconds in hand by Ramsey, which he maintained to the end of the lap. After a perfect pit stop he road to his boards to eventually crossed the line by 8.40s from McGuinness.

It was a polished performance and a perfect way to chalk up his first TT victory after a couple of desperate injury-hit years and bikes that stopped him for exploiting his talents.

Padgetts Honda rider McGuinness had one of his best 600 riders in recent years to finish second but Guy Martin had to be content with his third successive podium finish of the week. The poignancy was not lost on him as that first win continues to elude him and he had to sit next to Johnson, not just an arch rival but also another Lincolnshire lad on a parallel career path who had beaten him to the first win.

It was another race of drama and controversy.

Drama: Michael Dunlop’s race ended prematurely when his Street Sweep R6 ground to a halt at Ballacraine. He eventually traced the fault and continued but had lost too much time to be a front-runner.

Drama: Cameron Donald broken down at Signpost on the final lap with second place nailed.

Controversy: Red flags were briefly shown at Ramsey and Union Mills. At Ramsey five riders stopped but then restarted when the error was acknowledged and were later credited with the lost time. But at Union Mills Keith Amor, Martin and Cameron Donald all slowed but, thankfully, when their lost time was calculated, the final result was not affected but the incident.

It was also a day of firsts:  John Holden and Andrew Winkle finally racked up their first Sidecar TT win – Holden having raced at the TT since 1988 and scored seven previous podium finishes. The pair have raced together since 2006.

The other major result of the day was Michael Rutter’s win in the TT Zero race riding the beautiful and innovative MotoCzysz. Rutter lapped tantilisingly close to the 100mph target at 99.60mph and was clocked at 149.5mph along Sulby. He crossed the line 18.25s ahead of American Mark Miller on last year’s MotoCzysz.