The close rivalry in the Isle of Man Centre ACU solo road race championship between Jamie Cringle and Rory Parker continues to rage into a third consecutive season.

Similarly matched on a brace of 1,000cc Honda Fireblades, the two are virtually inseparable on track.

Ramsey man Parker won both races at the opening round at Jurby on March 22 with a 10th of a second separating them in the first encounter.

Three weeks later on April 12, Cringle balanced things up with two wins in round two, the gap in each instance less than two tenths of a second.

On Sunday, Parker won race one by a big chunk of 13 seconds after Cringle eased back, suspecting a rear puncture.

‘Rory was so close to me at the bottom end of the track that he unintentionally hit the back of my bike. I don’t know how he stayed on,’ said Jamie.

‘I felt something was adrift at the rear-end and feared a puncture, so I just toured to the finish.’

Race two was a real hum-dinger with Parker grabbing the early lead, then Cringle trying several times to come up the inside of him on subsequent laps into the first left-hander. Eventually he managed to squeeze through and edge away to win by 0.458 of a second to leave them even stevens after the first six races of the season with three wins apiece.

Numbers were poor in the main race with Grant Thomson and Mikey Evans at the North West 200, and Sean Crone racing in England, so Kyle Casement grabbed third place in each virtually unopposed, while teenagers Rhys Callister and Alex Galloway both rode well to rack up some good points.

Casement, who had driven in the Manx National car rally earlier in the weekend, won both the Supersport races by comfortable margins on his 765 Triumph, followed by Galloway, George Hadaway and Wayne Avis in each.

Galloway and Avis had a win apiece in the Lightweight class, while Ozzy Madey won both of the CB500 clashes from Tomo Burnett.

The impressive Jack Meechan won both of the novice/clubman events from Jim Hasdell, with race two only decided by a margin of less than six tenths of a second.

The novice B races were divided between Mason Hotchkiss and Guo Cheng.

The four remaining races were all won by resident Italian Francesco Faraldo. The first race of the day for Single, Twin and Triple machines he took by almost nine seconds on his Aprilia 660 from Paul Cassidy’s 650 Kawasaki twin, while Lex Geval pushed him hard in the second on his class-winning Post-Classic Yamaha R1.

The order between Faraldo and Cassidy was similar in the first Supertwin/Sportbike race, but the latter man was considerably closer in the last when the gap was closer to two seconds.

Aaron Redmond had two third place finishes on his Aprilia, while the aforementioned Geval and Meechan were the respective winners of the two Pre-injection 600 classes.

- Grant Thomson was side-lined from the Pre-TT Classic when he suffered a fractured left ankle at the North West 200.

He was high-sided from Gus Turner’s 1000cc Suzuki exiting Mill Road roundabout on the outskirts of Portstewart during the rescheduled Thursday evening qualifying session.

Thomson will be aiming to make a return at the Southern 100 in July with his main focus on the Manx Grand Prix.