Jamie Cringle grabbed the early initiative in the Isle of Man Centre ACU solo road race championship courtesy of a double victory at Jurby Motordrome on Sunday.
With his elder brother and defending champion Ryan off island, Cringle’s main threat was always going to come from fellow Honda Fireblade rider Rory Parker.
Cringle grabbed the holeshot in both races on the 1.7-mile anti-clockwise circuit, building his lead up to three seconds in the first, but a knee slider was ripped off on lap five and he struggled to turn the bike, enabling Parker to close up to within four tenths of a second at the close.
Similarly-mounted Illy Quayle got the better of Kyle Casement (765 Triumph) for third, with Grant Thomson the leading 600, overhauling the Post-TT Classic 750 Suzuki of Mikey Evans mid-distance.
There were no problems for Cringle in race two, which he won by 4.3s from Parker, with Quayle, Casement, Thomson, Evans and visiting rider Harley McCabe of Shipley completing a carbon-copy result.
Cringle and Parker reported slides in the cool track temperatures.
The Supersport races were closely contested between Casement and Thomson, with the latter grabbing race one and Casement squaring things up with victory in the other by 0.135 of a second.
Not surprisingly, 2024 double TT winners Ryan and Callum Crowe were in a class of their own in the sidecars, but it was good to see a decent line-up of five outfit. Visitors Craig Currie and Jason Pitt grabbed two second places, and comeback man Stu Bainborough a fourth and a third with Jake Roberts.
Having graduated from Pitbikes, Alexander Galloway had two fine third places in the Supersport class and dominated the Novice/Clubman's with a brace of wins on his Yamaha R6.
There were numerous offs, including teenager Aron Redmond during qualifying at the fast right-hander leading onto the start and finish straight. Former Centre champion Ryan Kneen took a hefty tumble at the same spot when leading the first Lightweight race on Neil Wood’s ZXR400, but walked away from it.
Dan Sayle ultimately won that on the Falcon Honda Moto3 bike, but blotted his copybook when diving up the inside of leader Francesco Faraldo at Hodge and lost the front in race two, resulting in both of them going down.
This left 16-year-old Sean Crone to take his second ever win at Jurby on the BD Racing Kawasaki.
Fraser Heginson was the leading CB500 rider in that one from Will Corkill (who’d slid off in practice) and Sam Bowers.
Paul Cassidy had earlier come off Rob Brew’s 650 twin on the brakes into Runway turn midway through the opening race, when on the rear wheel of Evans’s SRAD Suzuki. He was uninjured, but his leathers were damaged so he played no further part in the meeting.
Evans won the second by a substantial margin, with Faraldo repeating his earlier Single, Twin, Triple success.
The first Pre-injection 600/Supertwin race went to Thomson, but the second was a cracker between him and BSB Rapid-training Honda Supersport competitor McCabe who managed to grab the lead at Hodge on the final lap and take the win by 0.119s, the closest of the day. The latter won the Supertwin class on his on his 660 Aprilia. Faraldo was an equally close third.
Report and Photos by John Watterson