Eventful race meeting at Dundrod

The event had every twist and turn imaginable and the occasional unimaginable occurrence. The racing amongst the front runners was the closest seen in many a year at the event, unfortunately so were the incidents.

The day started with the Around A Pound Superstock race, which due to the weather was red flagged and declared as a wet race allowing the riders to change their machines tyres to wet’s. The race was dominated by Dean Harrison, Dan Kneen and Bruce Anstey who diced constantly swapping positions throughout the 5 lap race with a final outcome of Kneen taking the win from Harrison by just 0.001 of a second with Anstey taking 3rd position just a mere 0.109 back from Harrison.

Local man Stephen Thompson had a fantastic result finishing in 4th position and was delighted with the result on his Batham’s BMW machine. Ballinderry man Gareth Keys took 15th position.

Unfortunately, Harrison’s run of bad luck continued when in the next race he lost control of his machine at Ireland’s which resulted in Keith Amor having to bail off his machine to avoid colliding with Harrison but in doing resulted in Dan Kneen crashing into the fallen Amor. All three riders were taken to hospital where they were declared clear of any serious injuries.

Upon the restart of the race William Dunlop dominated from the front, keeping Anstey and Johnston behind him until his engine failed a mere 3 miles from the chequered flag resulting in Anstey taking the win from local man Lee Johnston with Guy Martin coming home in 3th. Ivan Lintin took a very respectable 4th on the Lisburn based McKinstry Honda.

In a nail biting and thankfully incident free race, Christian Elkin and Daley Mathison battled for the lead in the Ultra Lightweight class with positions swapping between them almost corner by corner during the race. Mathison, however, just got the upper hand on the day taking the win from Elkin by just 0.22 of a second. Mathison stated, “I rode the race of my life during that race and the wee bike was fantastic. I would like to thank my team and sponsors for their support.”

James Cowton on his debut to the Ulster Grand Prix took the win in the 250cc Lightweight class from John Ella by a commanding 30 seconds.

We then witnessed another amazing battle between the front runners of the McKinstry Hire super bike race which saw Bruce Anstey, Guy Martin & local rider Lee Johnston in wheel to wheel action out in front from the rest of the field. The race concluded with Anstey taking the win from Martin by 0.26 of a second with Lee Johnstom coming home in 3rd position.

The second supersport race was also red flagged on the first lap due to an incident at the Deer’s Leap section of the course due to Bruce Anstey losing control of his machine and crashing. This resulted in rider Michael Sweeney, Ian Hutchinson and Mercer colliding with Anstey’s spinning bike causing a multi rider incident. None of the competitors sustained any serious injuries.

The last race of the day had to be postponed due to time restrictions and was not run.

The organisers and the Metzler Ulster Grand Prix are to be commended as they kept the event going forward despite being challenged by the day’s course of events at almost every turn proving that the training, ability and dedication of all those individuals involved behind the scenes are probably of the highest quality to be found.