Dean Harrison extended his recent rich vein of form at this weekend’s Armoy road races as he continued to build momentum ahead of the final International road race of the year, the Ulster Grand Prix.

Despite not having competed at the event since 2010 the Bradford man was quickly on the pace during Friday’s practice sessions managing to qualify his Mar-Train Yamaha’s in the first group for both the supersport and superbike races on the first and third rows respectively.

The supersport encounters, held on Friday evening and Saturday morning, were eventually carbon copies of each other with Harrison and Guy Martin providing the crowd entertainment by duelling for the final two steps on the podium behind double winner William Dunlop. On both occasions the Yamaha UK man had to settle for third place, losing out by just a fraction of a second in race two.

Starting from the third row in eighth place meant Harrison would have to battle his way through the field on his superstock YZF-R1M if he was to climb onto the superbike podium. After scoring a fifth place in race one the team made some adjustments to his suspension and the twenty six year old made the most of the improvements, chasing down and passing William Dunlop to claim third place in the Race of Legends feature race.

With eight podiums including three wins July has been a break through month for Mar-Train and could signal the turning point of their two year plan with Yamaha UK.

Team Principal – Tim Martin

“Dean has ridden really well today at a circuit he doesn’t know, he was getting faster with every outing and I am really pleased with his podium in the feature race. We made a small change to the R1 for it and it solved a small issue we have been having over jumps, that allowed Dean to push on and he did well to catch and pass Dunlop around here. We started July with our heads down but have finished it with our tails up, full credit to Dean, my guys and Yamaha UK for making that happen.”

Rider – Dean Harrison

“Today was good fun, I had two good battles with Guy on the six hundred and we were kind of unlucky to lose out in the last one. We made a change for the Race of Legends and for the first time the R1 was perfect over the jumps, I pushed on past Derek (McGee) and finally William, Michael and Guy were gone but a podium was a good result. We’ve had a good few events so we’re heading to the Ulster in a good frame of mind, I’m looking forward to a strong finish to the year.”

The team’s next outing will be the International Ulster Grand Prix from 3rd to 8th August.