The Ulsterman was odds-on favourite to win the Senior TT finale on Saturday after taking victory in the opening Superbike race of the 2023 event last week on his Hawk Racing-run Honda.
A win on Saturday would have put him equal on 26 with his late uncle Joey Dunlop at the top of the victory records, but instead he had to settle for third as FHO Racing was able to solve its issues with its BMW which allowed Peter Hickman to dominate.
Dunlop was visibly struggling with the front-end of his Honda in the first laps of Saturday’s race, which he said afterwards was his own fault as he made a set-up change for the Senior in anticipation of the pace being faster than it was.
“I thought we definitely went quicker, I just made an error on my own behalf,” Dunlop told TT+.
“I tried something today, because I thought the pace was going to get a lot faster, but it didn’t.
“I thought definitely we should have been well into the 136mphs. But it didn’t, for some reason the pace slowed down a bit.
“We made a wee bit of a change to allow for that, but we just didn’t push into it.
“We just lost a bit of a grip. The boys were pushing and we knew that it was going to get hot and heavy.
“It’s just took a lap or two to get settled in because we weren’t able to push.
“We got caught with some backmarkers, I lost my run of it and to get pushing on we just ran out of scope really.”
Dunlop’s team made changes to the front suspension during his first pitstop to try and correct the issue, but it didn’t make much difference.“That’s where we struggled, but there’s only so much you can do with tools in the pits,” he added when asked about the front-end tweaks to his bike.
“But that’s just the way it was. We’re always trying to go faster and we had to try something.”
Picture credit @ttracesofficial/Pacemaker Press
