This year, the 33-time TT winner took delivery of a 2026 Ducati Panigale V4 R ahead of the North West 200 for the Superbike class, but after testing it at the official BSB test at Oulton Park in April he showed up at the North West with a Honda CBR1000RR-R for the main category.<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_1314.jpg\")
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Michael Dunlop, Isle of Man TT 2024<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Isle of Man TT<\/p>\n
The Fireblade remains in the MD Racing tent at the TT, too, today (25 May), the opening day of practice at the 2026 TT, which is really the only point at which you can be sure what machinery the factory-unaffiliated Dunlop will have available to him for the fortnight, as noted by Davey Todd.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t think you can ever fully confirm, even the day before the TT, what bike Michael [Dunlop] will be riding,\u201d said Todd, who is missing this year\u2019s TT due to injuries sustained at the Daytona 200, on the Isle of Man TT official broadcast today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of hype about him riding the new Ducati V4. And, whatever\u2019s happened with that, he\u2019s ended up deciding not to ride it and to pull out a Honda Fireblade instead.<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fxn9SG2WcAIiN-g.jpg\")
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Michael Dunlop<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know he\u2019s going to be fast on that. He set his personal best lap time around the TT on a Fireblade.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd a BMW I think in the Superstock class, which again he proved last year he\u2019s very fast on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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On the surface, switching to the Honda seems like a step back for Dunlop, but the Ballymoney man was in control of the Superbike TT aboard the CBR1000RR-R in 2024 before a visor change went wrong in the final pit stop. His fastest ever lap of the TT course also came on the Honda at a 135.970mph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The beginning of practice at the 2026 Isle of Man TT has brought an end to the speculation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,28425,85],"class_list":["post-693610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-road-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}