Michael Dunlop set the pace at the 2026 Isle of Man Tt on 26 May, topping the opening Supersport qualifying session and giving the home crowd an early benchmark for the week. He was more than 2mph faster than Josh Brookes, with Brookes second and Peter Hickman third.
The result mattered because it established the first clear order in one of the TT’s headline solo classes, on a day when riders were beginning to show their hand across the meeting. Dean Harrison, meanwhile, failed to set a Supersport time after a pit-limiter issue on his Honda CBR600RR, leaving one of the class’s leading names without a lap on the board.
Harrison’s problem came in a session that was already producing mixed fortunes across the paddock. In Superbike and Superstock, he was quickest overall in the combined running, clocking two laps in the 133mph bracket on the Superbike-spec Honda and then setting the fifth-best Superstock time on a single lap. Josh Brookes led the Superstock riders, with Hickman second and Jamie Coward third, while in Sportbike Paul Jordan was fastest, the only rider to break the 120mph barrier, ahead of Coward and Mike Browne.
The sharpest interruption came in Sidecars, where the qualifying session was shortened by a red flag after a crash at Brandish involving Maria Costello and Shaun Parker. Costello suffered head injuries and Parker leg and arm injuries, but both were reported conscious before being taken by ambulance to Noble’s Hospital. Even with the interruption, Ryan and Callum Crowe topped the shortened session, ahead of Peter Founds and Jevan Walmsley and then Ben Birchall and Mark Wilkes.
That crash gave the opening night a hard edge that the lap charts alone could not show. While the top times were being settled across several classes, the Sidecar session ended early and Costello’s condition became the day’s most important question. The first qualifying order is now set, but the meeting has already shown how quickly a lap-time story can turn into a medical one at the TT.
