McGuinness smashes records on Island

John McGuinness has unofficially broken two lap records in TT practice on Wednesday night. The 31-year-old smashed Ryan Farquhar’s Junior record by over five seconds, and then went three-tenths of a second under the outright lap record held by the late David Jefferies.

McGuinness, riding a Yamaha R6 in the Junior class, had to stop during his first attempt at a good lap to zip up one of his boots, but once under way he put in a lap of 18 minutes 25 seconds, at an average speed of 122.92mph.

Switching to his Formula One Yamaha R1 he then recorded a time of 17 minutes 46.7 seconds, at an average speed of 127.34mph. The previous recored was 17 minutes 47 seconds at an average of 127.29mph.

Junior 600: John McGuinness 18 minutes 25 seconds. Jason Griffiths 18 minutes 51.4 seconds. Raymond Porter 19 minutes 2.4 seconds.

Formula One: John McGuinness 17 minutes 46.7 seconds. Bruce Anstey 17 minutes 56.8 seconds. Adrian Archibald 18 minutes 3.1 seconds.

Production 600: Bruce Anstey 19 minutes 3.2 seconds. Martin Finnegan 19 minutes 10 seconds. Richard Britton 19 minutes 22.6 seconds.

Production 1000cc: Richard Britton 18 minutes 37.1 seconds. Jason Griffiths 18 minutes 42.6 seconds. Mark parrett 18 minutes 46.2 seconds

Lightweight 400cc: Richard Britton 20 minutes 35 seconds. Martin Finnegan 21 minutes 23.2 seconds. Alex Donaldson 21 minutes 24 seconds.

Lightweight 125cc: Robert Dunlop 20 minutes 38.5 seconds. Chris Palmer 20 minutes 43.3 seconds. Ian Lougher 21 minutes 8.2 seconds.

Sidecars: Ian Bell/Craig Hallam 20 minutes 34.9 seconds. Nick Crowe/Darran Hope 20 minutes 47.1 seconds. Roy Hands/Dave Wells 20 minutes 59.5 seconds.

One of the sidecar competitors has died after suffering serious injuries in an accident during the Wednesday practice session. Paul Cowley, a 22-year-old Manxman was the passenger in a sidecar outfit, and was thrown out of the machine in the vicinity of the Black Dub near Glen Helen.