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Peter Hickman has taken over six seconds off the outright lap record at the 2023 Isle of Man TT en route to taking his second win of the week in the superstock class.
Surpassing his own superbike pace from 2018, Hickman claimed victory from Michael Dunlop by a comfortable 17 seconds, with Dean Harrison once again rounding out the podium in third place.
Now drawing him equal with names like Steve Hislop and Peter McCallen on 11 wins around the historic Snaefell Mountain Circuit, it’s likely that it’ll be a victory remembered more for his laptime than his gap to second place, given the dominant nature of his final flying lap to raise the average speed by nearly one full mile per hour.
Another win for @PeterHickman60 puts him on an equal number of wins with TT legends Philip McCallen and Steve Hislop. What another remarkable accolade for Peter 👏#TT2023 #Superstock @RL360_group pic.twitter.com/VvHnOsilpA
— Isle of Man TT Races (@ttracesofficial) June 9, 2023
His race itself, the record laptime aside, was an almost picture-perfect repeat of his Tuesday victory in the production-derived class, Hickman taking an early lead despite admitting afterwards to not quite feeling his 100% initially, and then managing the advantage over Dunlop – before absolutely pulling the pin on the last lap to make it around the 37.73 miles some 12 seconds faster than his Northern Irish rival.
The lap clocked in at an average speed of 136.358mph, and a time of 16m36s.114s – compared to the past record of 135.542mph/16m42.778s.
Dunlop was comfortably clear of Harrison in third, taking second place by 40 seconds and relegating the DAO Racing Kawasaki rider to the final step of the podium for the fifth time this week.
However, the race win might also have presented Hickman with a bit of a problem for tomorrow’s final race of the TT fortnight, the blue-riband Senior TT. Given he’d struggled so far throughout the event with his own superbike machine and was beaten by Dunlop a week ago in the opening race, it means that many are now expecting Hickman to instead elect to run the more standard, superstock-spec BMW M1000RR bike in that event, too.
Before that, however, Michael Dunlop has a chance to make TT history of his very own by drawing equal with his uncle Joey as the most successful TT racer of all time, with the penultimate race of the event getting underway with the supertwin class shortly.
