Honda Continues Record-Breaking Isle of Man TT Qualifying
Honda Racing delivered another strong performance at the 2025 Isle of Man TT, on a day when both the timed Qualifying 2 and Qualifying 3 sessions were scheduled to be run in a single afternoon. A second new record was etched into the TT history books by the team but, unfortunately, the final session had to be abandoned after a red flag incident.
In Qualifying 2, the first session of the afternoon, Dean Harrison opened his account with a sensational lap on the Superstock variant of the Honda Fireblade, averaging 132.853 mph to go clear at the top of the timesheets in the ‘showroom’ class. This time proved to be the fastest of any machine on the circuit, including the full race specification Superbike class, underlining the strength of Harrison’s challenge at this year’s TT.
Partnering the Yorkshireman in both the Superbike and Superstock classes is Honda’s 23-time TT winner, John McGuinness MBE. McGuinness’s opening lap in Friday’s Qualifying 2 session on the Superbike included a huge save after the Fireblade landed awkwardly over the jumps at Ago’s Leap. Despite this drama, the Morecambe Missile ended up just behind Harrison as they took seventh and eighth places among the Superbikes, while in the Superstock class, McGuinness set the 17th fastest lap.
Closing the Qualifying 2 runs was the smaller capacity Supersport class, in which Harrison is mounting a solo campaign on the Honda CBR600RR. Having gone second fastest in Wednesday’s opening session, he set a new Supersport Qualifying record of 128.093 mph on Friday afternoon, underlining his position among the favourites at this year’s event.
For a full schedule of the event, please click here
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Dean Harrison
“Honestly, I just try to go fast on everything that I ride. To where I feel okay. We’ve been constantly changing a few bits and pieces to try and get the most out of what we have. There’s no big changes that we’ve made; it’s just a case of constantly refining things. We’ve played a little with the geometry and things like that to make the bikes easy to ride. I had a few bits of traffic early on, I caught some Supertwins when I was out on the Supersport, but I was out on my own when I set that fast time on the Superstock, I was all by myself and I saw nobody. It was quite nice, really… I was enjoying the peace and quiet! I’m enjoying myself, looking forward to the races and hopefully we should be there or thereabouts.”
John McGuinness MBE
“A bit of a tough day at the office, really. When you’re racing bikes you don’t want to stand still and just keep doing the same thing, we’re always looking to go forward, but we tried some things and they didn’t really work for us. It was a tough few laps this afternoon and then for Qualifying 3 we changed the bike back to the way it was for the Senior TT in 2024, because we went really well then, and it felt a lot better. No qualms about that, really, if it works. We just need to find that sweet spot again. I’m pleased for the team, Dean’s flying, we’re just a little bit behind the eight ball at the moment but it felt like we were getting there. It’s just that we only got halfway round the lap when the bike was feeling more like how I would want it and we got red-flagged, so I hope that Pete’s okay.”
Team Manager Havier Beltran
“The weather hasn’t been kind to the organisers this year, disrupting the schedule, which meant that the second and third Qualifying sessions had to run almost back-to-back. What that meant for the team was that they had only a very small window of time in which to make any setup changes that the riders might need. Dean went out and immediately showed how well everything is working - the bikes, the setup and of course the rider. We’ve been trying some new things with John’s bikes and, in all honesty, they didn’t work out how we might have hoped. But then the improvement that came when he went out for the final session was clear because there was a significant improvement in his pace and in his feedback on how the bike felt. Unfortunately, though, the session had to be stopped due to the incident with Peter Hickman, who we were glad to hear from the organisers is conscious and in a stable condition, and we wish him a speedy recovery.”