Dunne is not done with fast times yet
JOHN DUNNE admitted that there is still room for improvement despite another record-breaking display at the penultimate hill climb of the season.
A strong entry took to the start line of the Guernsey Motorcycle and Car Club event on Monday, one of two Val des Terres events in less than week as the Guernsey Kart & Motor Club follows suit this weekend.
And as ever, there were some quick times produced as four drivers – including Dunne – and one rider, namely Colin de Jersey, broke class records.
On a day when several of the established names of the sport took centre stage, Darren Warwick was the fastest on show with a best time of 27.74sec., nearly a second ahead of Nick Saunders’ 28.63.
As for Dunne, he took another chunk off of his road going series production cars record as he took his Carrus Evo 5 up in 34.00 in his final run of the day.
That was 0.14 better than at the start of the day, although is still six-hundredths short of his GKMC class best and, as such, he knows it is not quite there yet.
‘When you get to a certain point and are breaking the class record regularly, every hundredth counts and every tiny little slip can be so costly,’ he said.
‘So while I was pretty happy with the day, I still didn’t feel that I put a really good run together – I was happy with the car but not so much with myself.
‘But generally I am pleased at the moment, myself and the car have a good working relationship and my aim this weekend is to try and at least beat the 34.00 I did in this one.’
Another of the veterans of the hill climb scene, de Jersey, was also breaking his own record on his historic HS2 Triumph Cub bike in the pre-1975 class.
He scraped two-hundredths off the record to clock 38.87, while Chris Guille was breaking his dad Geoff’s previous record of 37.74 in some style in the road going specialist production cars up to 1400cc class with 35.42.
Despite not racing it was a doubly-disappointing day for Geoff, who also lost his record in the equivalent class for 1401-to-1800cc, as Martin Dorey put his name in the record books.
However, for drama and quality all round, the road going series production cars up to 2000cc class was the place to be.
It included Dunne, who was racing in his daughter Kayleigh’s car as he doubled up, but he had to take a back seat and watch Dan Bichard and Adam Le Page battle it out for the glory.
Le Page was the first to go below Josh Baker’s class record of 37.27 when he clocked 37.24 in his penultimate run, but then Bichard stole the show with a 36.93 in the dying stages of the day.
