Michael Rutter took a comfortable victory in the SES TT Zero Emissions race but was frustrated after missing out on becoming the first rider ever to average 100mph for a lap of the mountain circuit on an electric bike.
The 39-year-old started ten seconds behind his teammate Mark Miller but had already overtaken him on the road by the time they had reached Glen Helen and as the two MotoCzysz E1PC machines ran together on the road, Rutter always held a clear lead on corrected time.
The Shropshire rider eased to victory by 18.25seconds with Miller completing a 1-2 for Segway Racing MotoCzysz, but the £10,000 prize for reaching 100mph would evade Rutter.
His lap was clocked at 99.604mph, which is still the record for an electric machine at the TT, but Rutter later admitted the prize money should have been his had he spent more time getting used to the bike.
“99.6mph – that's the story of my life. I tried to conserve battery life and stay smooth. It's a totally different way of riding but I really enjoyed it. We only saw the bike on Wednesday, so I think if we had more time there would be more to come set-up wise.”
£5,000 was also at stake for the fastest University outfit and George Spence finished 2m52s behind in third to claim the prize for Ecotricity Kingston (Kingston University London) and also earn himself a silver replica.
Allan Brew finished fourth for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while Yoshinari Matsushita made it to the end in fifth for the Japanese outfit Team Prozza.
John Burrows had shown some promising pace through qualifying but the race wouldn't go well for the Lighting Motorcycles rider who was forced to push his machine over the line to take sixth. Three other riders took part in the race but Dan Kneen, Roy Richardson and Russ Mountford failed to make it to the finish.
