The Tamworth Sporting Car Club has run another Lap Dash for its club series with 71-year-old Gundy Hunt taking out the victory in thrilling style.
In a day where the 15 competitors were met with a variety of different weather conditions, Hunt ultimately proved fastest on his seventh lap with his time just quick enough to secure victory over a young Jackson Halloran.
Behind the wheel of his Westfield Clubman, all the odds were stacked against the club veteran after only having slicks available for the morning’s wet surface, as well as suffering a tyre puncture when rolling the car out of his trailer.
It wasn’t enough to ruin his desire though as Hunt eventually made it onto the track and produced a number a of strong results before posting his event winning time of 39.43 seconds on his seventh run of the day.
For Halloran, he offered a number of challenges to the man 45 years his senior and came extremely close to pipping him, but fell short by just nine hundredths of a second when recording his best effort came on the 15th and final run of the day.
Rounding out the top three within a second of Hunt and Halloran was Brian Cox, who like the runner-up, posted his fastest time of 40.3270 seconds on his final attempt of the day.
Following on from the event, Hunt revealed how thrilled he was to take out the win against a field of younger drivers, especially with the event almost cancelled.
“It was great. I was so happy to get one over all the young kids that were competing in there. I was telling them how I was old enough to be their father and grandfather so to beat them was great,” Hunt said.
“Jackson is a very good operator. He goes hard and drives his Mazda very well. He’s also a really good club member. Naturally, I was really proud to have beaten a bunch of people who are younger than me and happy to show the young bucks a things or two.
“There was lots of discussion in the lead up to the event and again in the morning about potentially pulling the event as there weren’t many numbers and it was raining. But as we haven’t had many events this year and because we’re not in it to make money, we’re in it for motorsport, the club decided to go ahead.
“The track was too wet in the morning, so I didn’t take part in the first two runs and because I only had slick tyres, I wasn’t sure if I was going to run at all. But then the rain stopped, the sun came out and the heavy wind dried the surface, so I got out.
“It seemed everything was going against me because of the poor weather conditions and the flat tyre. I was about to spit the dummy, but I had some assistance from some other members and I just managed to squeeze in all my runs before the tyre went flat again.