Dean Harrison gets off to a flying start at the Southern 100

DEAN Harrison got off to a record-breaking start in the opening race of the 2026 Southern 100 at a sun-kissed Billown yesterday morning.

On the back of his best TT to date, the resident Yorkshireman was on pole for the Peel Holdings Superbike race, the first ever to be held on a Wednesday morning, certainly in the recent history of the ‘friendly races’.

In hot conditions, with the track temperature already approaching 30C, he grabbed the holeshot and was ahead of TT rivals Michael Dunlop, Mike Browne and Peter Hickman into Ballakeighan corner.

At Cross Four Ways, Onchan’s Nathan Harrison was up to fifth after making a sluggish start in an estimated 10th place.

Dean Harrison’s lead was 2.5sec over Browne at the end of the first circuit, with Dunlop at another half-a-second in third, then Hickman and Nathan Harrison.

Dunlop left his braking a tad too late into Ballakeighan on lap two and he was forced to take the slip road in the general direction of Fisher’s Hill. He rejoined the race in around 12th place, worked his way back up to around sixth, but then pulled into the pits to retire at the end of lap three.

Newcomer Hickman, having been unintentionally squeezed out by the Irish alliance of Dunlop and Browne into turn one, had worked his way up to second at Cross Four Ways on lap two, but he was happy to let Nathan Harrison go past as he still felt a little unwary on some sections of the 4.25-mile course, particularly the Ballabeg to Black Hole stretch.

At the front, Dean Harrison produced a record lap for the opening big bike race with a time of 2m 12.174s on the third circuit, an average speed of 115.757mph.

This increased his lead over namesake Nathan to 8.2s. Behind the top three were Dom Herbertson, Jordan and Laxey man Joe Yeardsley on his privately owned Honda Fireblade.

Rob Hodson was the second of the leaderboard men to retire.

Into the second half of the race Dean Harrison continued to tighten his grip on the race with the Honda Racing UK ‘blade. Herbertson ran wide on a tight turn early on lap five to elevate Jordan to fourth in front of the local trio of Yeardsley, Conor Cummins and Marcus Simpson.

Yeardsley briefly got past Jordan’s Jackson Racing Honda, but heading into the final lap Dean Harrison was 10.8s up on Nathan Harrison, with Hickman quite content to sit half-a-second behind the young Manxman in what was his first race over the course.

At the chequered flag the margin between the two unrelated Harrisons was 10.273s, Dean’s overall time of 15m 35.805s being a new race record.

Hickman was another second astern in third, followed by Jordan and Yeardsley - the latter pair separated by six tenths of a second. Herbertson rode hard on the Stanley Stewart BMW to reclaim sixth in front of Simpson and fellow Manxie Cummins, who crossed the line only 0.6s apart.

Browne, Jonathan Perry, local man Mikey Evans and Austrian newcomer Julian Trummer completed the top 12.

‘The bike was perfect,’ said Dean, ‘but there’s more pace there, so a few tweaks to come.

‘The Southern is as close as you can get to the TT.’

Nathan Harrison was delighted to be in the mix with two TT winners, while Hickman was equally satisfied with third in his maiden appearance on the course.