Steve Plater took the Padgett’s Honda Fireblade to a strong fourth place in the Royal London 360 Superstock TT at the Isle of Man TT festival on Tuesday evening – his second fourth place of the day.


Following his four lap outing for HM Plant Honda in the Relentless Supersport TT earlier in the day, Plater had a welcome rest prior to climbing on board the Padgett’s Honda Superstock bike for a further four laps of the TT course at 6.30pm.

He had posted the fastest time of the week in practice for the class and was hopeful of a strong result. Just before taking his place on the start line he said: “Padgett’s have made a big effort for this race and they have three bikes running, Ian Hutchinson, John McGuinness and me. I am riding Steve Brogan’s bike and he is lying second in the National Superstock championship at the moment so it’s a strong package.

“Clive Padgett has done a good job to get us all out here and he is feeling more nervous than I am at the moment! I need to start the race a little better, in the last two races I have taken a while to get going and I need to address that situation and see if I can do a little bit better in this race.”

As the Superstock TT got underway Plater was in seventh place at the end of the first lap and made steady progress during lap two to move up to fifth place. There was nothing between the top few riders with the two leaders covered by less than a second and less than 10 seconds covering the top seven riders.

At the scheduled pit stop for refuelling and tyres, Plater was only a couple of seconds behind his teammate John McGuinness on time and by the time they reached Glen Helen on lap three he had reeled him in and was running in fourth place.

Although he was only 11 seconds down on third place he was unable to catch Keith Amor on the Wilson Craig Honda and at the chequered flag had to settle for fourth place once again.

Despite missing out on a podium finish Plater did post his fastest lap of the week in the class with a scorching time of 17m 38.40s – 128.333mph bettering his times in practice and shaving over 11 seconds from his lap time.

“I was really happy with the first half of the race and thought that I may even have a chance of finishing on the podium,” said the Woodhall Spa star. “I got settled into the race really early on which set me up well and I'm happy with the way I've ridden and I've learnt even more about the course. But I couldn't keep quite the same pace after the pit stop which allowed the front runners to edge away and leave me just outside a podium finish.”

It was a good day for Honda as Hutchinson took his second win of the day with Guy Martin second and Keith Amor third, Plater was fourth followed by John McGuinness in fifth. The finishing order was exactly the same as in the Supersport race earlier in the day!

Plater returns to action today – Wednesday when he takes part in the second Supersport race which will run over four laps of the 37.73-mile course and is set to start at 10.45am.


Pic credit Glynne Lewis