Lee Johnston has a sixth and tenth place finish to show for his efforts in the first half of the TT week, but he has vowed to improve on that before the final race on Friday.
Despite not being 100 per cent fit, the Maguiresbridge man set the fastest practice time in the Supersport session last Thursday night.
The first race of the weekend was the highly competitive Superbike race on Saturday, and with the sun shining down on the Isle of Man roads the pace was blisteringly hot. Michael Dunlop produced the fastest ever lap around the island with Lee posting an average lap time of 130.692mph on his way to tenth.
On Monday Lee claimed sixth spot on his East Coast Racing Triumph in the Supersport race, and he looked set to improve on that finish in the afternoon’s Superstock race. An opening lap of 129.942mph was followed up with a superbly executed lap of 130.549mph on-board his East Coast Racing BMW S1000RR. This put Lee in fourth place at half-distance, just four seconds adrift of third placed man at the time, Dean Harrison. Unfortunately for Lee, he was disappointingly forced to retired his S1000RR at Sulby crossroads on the penultimate lap, but with the blue riband six-lap Senior TT closing the event for the solo classes on Friday, Lee is looking forward to having another solid couple of runs this week.
“Monday’s Superstock race was the first time I really got into a rhythm, and we maybe could have sneaked in for a podium,” he said. “We had a mechanical and it’s no one’s fault. Those opening two laps of 129.9mph and 130.5mph we did without a quick shifter, so it’s a pity I suppose, as we had the pace to challenge for a third place. Hopefully our luck will change. On the Supersport bike we had a small oil leak problem, so the plan is to push on a try to challenge for the podium.”
East Coast Racing team manager Jamie Ferguson has been happy with Lee’s performance so far, but he is also confident that there is room for improvement. “The pace at this year’s TT has been exceptionally high, so realistically anything inside the top ten in Superbike and top six or eight in the other classes are strong results,” he said. “Taking everything into consideration, including the little setback at Scarborough with the crash, I think we are having a decent TT. We were in there battling for a podium in the Superstock race and with two opening laps that were pretty much 130mph efforts combined, Lee was looking strong. Unfortunately, as can happen at the TT, we had a disappointing mechanical problem. Tenth in the Superbike race and a 130mph was a good result to start race week and seventh in Supersport race one gave us more information for the second race despite a small problem.”