Davey Todd has taken first blood in the opening race of the 2025 Isle of Man by coming out of the starting blocks in the Superbike TT and leading from start to finish in the rescheduled and shortened four-lap race - despite the best efforts of a late charge from Michael Dunlop only halted by tyre woes.
Todd, whose team-mate and co-owner of 8Ten Racing Peter Hickman was ruled out of this year’s event earlier this week after a practice crash, made his third TT win something of a tactical victory.
It came after a slow start to practice week that never quite looked like caputring his Senior TT-winning form from 12 months ago.
However, keeping something in reserve for the first race, Todd led to the first timing point at Glen Helen over Honda Racing’s Dean Harrison and extended his lead from there on.
Originally scheduled to go at 1045, the race was eventually only waved off at 1200, after organisers were forced to deal with oil spills at Creg na Baa and Bray Hill left by road vehicles before the public roads closed.
Stretching out the lead to nearly 10 seconds as the slow-starting Dunlop overhauled Harrison for second on the times and then first on the road, Todd looked to be in a little bit of danger right up until the final climb of the mountain section of the course, where he pulled out a two-second lead he maintained to the line.
“We lost some time in the pitstop,” he explained afterwards, “and I had to put my head down on the last lap and try and put in a decent time.
“I’ve not been sandbagging as such, but I knew I had a little more in hand, and I needed to use it then I could. I felt like I was in that position. I didn’t really want to stick my neck out, because every time we’ve went out we’ve been in different track conditions with damp patches and oil.
“We went in blind and I wanted to take it steady, so considering that the laptimes are pretty good. I knew we could do it, but we’ll be a lot stronger if conditions improve.”
Dunlop, however, was quick to pin the blame for his own relatively slow end to the race on his rear tyres. Closing the gap to Todd comfortably from a strong pitstop and across the last two laps, he says that his loss of rear grip is what eventually cost him what would have been a history-making 30th TT win.
“It just fell apart like a cheap watch,” he explained. “Sadly, that’s just what happened, but it was as good as over. The pitstop done real well and everything felt good out of the gate, but with no practice done this week and with the imperfect laptimes we’ve been doing, making the next step up put us in a new position and we needed to change some suspension stuff.
“We knew we were just going to struggle a wee hair today, and I knew that the rear tyre was shagged. We lost all traction control and it started to spin its brains out. It’s actually broken the rear hugger as it started to deteriorate, and I just knew it was going to be a hard push because I knew Davey was getting a push on as well.”
Dunlop will have another chance to break records later this evening in the first Supersport TT race, though, which is scheduled to go at 1500 after two laps of sidecar race action.
Results
1 Davey Todd, Monster Energy by 8TEN Racing BMW
2 Michael Dunlop, MD Racing BMW
3 Dean Harrison, Honda Racing UK
4 Nathan Harrison, Honda Racing UK
5 David Johnson, Platinum Club Racing Kawasaki
6 James Hillier, Muc-Off Racing Honda
7 John McGuinness, Honda Racing UK
8 Joshua Brookes, Jackson Racing powered by Prosper2 Honda
9 Michael Evans, Dafabet Racing Honda
10 Paul Jordan, Jackson Racing powered by Prosper2 Honda
