The 35-year-old matched the all-time record of 26 previously held by his late uncle Joey Dunlop since 2000 last Saturday in the opening Supersport race of TT 2024.
Dunlop was denied the chance to better that in last Sunday’s Superbike TT when a visor issue knocked him out of a commanding lead, but he came into Wednesday’s rescheduled Supertwin contest as the favourite.
Leading on corrected time from the off on his MD Racing-run Paton, Dunlop controlled the three-lap race from start to finish to secure his second win of the week and become the most successful rider ever at the TT.
Peter Hickman was second on his Swan Yamaha R7, but couldn’t do much to challenge Dunlop on a bike some 5mph down on the Paton.
Paul Jordan set off at #1 on the road, but the podium hopeful immediately had problems with his machine and retired in the pits at the end of the opening lap.
Dunlop charged into a 3.2s lead over Dominic Herbertson on the run to the Glen Helen sector split, which extended to 10.2s over the rest of the first lap before he headed to the pits for his mandatory fuel stop.
Hickman had managed to move up to second come the end of the first lap having started it fifth at the Glen Helen split.
But despite having a marginally quicker pitstop than Dunlop, the Paton rider found time on the run to Glen Helen on the second tour and extended his lead to 10.7s.
Opening it out to 14s by the time they reached Ramsey, Hickman did claw back a few seconds on the run over the mountain to get it down to 12s to start the last lap.
But Dunlop twisted the screws at the start of the final lap, opening his lead to 17.3s over Hickman and continued to swell that as he crossed the finish line for an emotional second win of the 2024 event.
Dunlop also came close to setting a new class record on his last lap, though missed only just with a 122.434mph effort.
Hickman came under no threat for second on the Yamaha to finish second, albeit 20.4s behind Dunlop.
In third was a maiden podium at the TT for the popular Herbertson on his Burrows Engineering Paton.
Jamie Coward was fourth on the KTS Kawasaki, just 5.4s from the podium, while Mike Browne (Scott Racing Motorcycles Aprilia) completed the top five ahead of Davey Todd (Dafabet Racing Kawasaki).
Rob Hodson, who was running in podium contention, retired out of the top five on the last lap at the Grandstand.
