Honda Racing completes Practice Week at the 2025 Isle of Man TT
Honda Racing completed its pre-race programme with more strong performances from its Superbike, Supersport and Superstock machines in the hands of riders Dean Harrison and John McGuinness MBE.
The fast-changing weather conditions that have typified the 2025 running of the event so far remained present for Sunday’s final day of practice before Race Week commences.
Qualifying 5 therefore acted as a final systems check for the teams up and down the grid, with Honda Racing having worked its way towards the definitive setup for its fleet of Honda Fireblade Superbike and Superstock machines, and the single Honda CBR600RR that Harrison will also compete with in the races to come.
With that Supersport entry, Harrison and the CBR600RR once again ended the session at the top of the timesheets. Opting not to run the Superstock in this final session, the Yorkshireman rounded out his Superbike programme with the second fastest time of the day.
For McGuinness, the 23-time TT winner, Sunday’s running provided an opportunity to confirm that the various setup changes on his Superstock and Superbike Fireblades have put him in the best position to start Race Week. Ending up ninth place on the Superstock and seventh on the Superbike, McGuinness was in a positive frame of mind as he looked forward to the races to come.
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Dean Harrison
“We just ran the Supersport and the Superbike, we didn’t get the chance to run the Superstock, we didn’t have time with all the schedule changes today. We got a lap on each of those away from the race tomorrow and tried a couple of things on the Superbike. It wasn’t 100% better so we’re going to go back to the settings that we had before for the race. On the 600 we had spring changes that made it a little bit better, so that’s ready for the race, really. Conditions weren’t too bad, actually, it was better than I thought, I think because of the heat it was drying out quicker than I expected. So it wasn’t too bad. I can’t complain, I think we’re good to go for tomorrow.”
John McGuinness MBE
“I quite weirdly enjoyed that last Superstock lap. The Superbike was okay, we’re in the ballpark with that. I’m still down on where I need to be but I think that sixth to tenth place are pretty close, really. The leading guys have gone - it’s fantastic (to watch) - but I think I’ve still got a bit left in the tank. I need a race under my belt to settle in. I’m a bit of a slow burner, me. So I’ll get a race under my belt, try and enjoy the race: four laps and a good pitstop and we’ll see where we end up. It’s really hard to judge before that. I like the new tyre that we’ve got but I’ve only had two standing start laps on it. So it’s really hard to go into a race like that, it needs a bit more mileage on it, but we’ve got the bike now to where we finished last year and we were going okay so I think that’s what we’re going to race tomorrow. Then it’s 151 miles to see where we are by the end of that. I think everyone’s in the same boat, it’s been a bit of a strange TT. I don’t know, I’ve done it for so many years now and there’s always something - and I haven’t got many more years at it, so I just want it to be brilliant sunshine!”
