Today’s provisional qualifying session for the Festival of Motorcycling has been cancelled.

A speed-controlled lap for newcomers took place yesterday after bad weather thwarted plans for a qualifying session.

Clerk of the course Gary Thompson said: ’The TT Marshals’ Association did an outstanding job yesterday to get marshals in place for last night’s first qualifying session, and I am very grateful to all of the marshals that turned out last night.

’Although the start of the session was delayed because we had to move a number of marshals around the TT course, we were thwarted by a shower of rain which severely affected the west coast of the island.

’Last night, I made the decision that we would use this afternoon to run a full qualifying session, but having reviewed the marshalling numbers for today, it is very clear we will be 80+ marshals short of the manning levels required for the TT course, which is significantly below the number that we require.

’What I don’t want to do is close the road, get everyone in place, have everyone waiting and then find we can’t hold the qualifying session, so we have decided to give everyone plenty of notice and cancel today’s session and concentrate on getting marshal numbers in place for Monday night.’

Roads are due to close at 6pm on Monday evening for the first practice/qualifying session, which is due to get under way at 6.20pm with the Classic TT Superbikes/Lightweights and the MGP Senior/Juniors followed by the Classic TT Seniors/Juniors and the MGP Lightweights/Ultra Lightweights at 7.15pm with a separate MGP Newcomers’ practice at 7.45pm with roads due to open all around the Course around 8.30pm but no later than 9pm.