JOEY DUNLOP 25th ANNIVERSARY: 'I paid to get onto the big wheel at the funfair to try and see my dad coming over the line'

This was certainly the case at the Isle of Man TT in 2000, when Joey was determined to win the Formula One race for the first time since 1988.

Unhappy with the Honda Fireblade he received at the beginning of the season, Joey was offered a 1000cc VTR SP-1 in his quest to topple new pretender, David Jefferies, and the formidable V&M Yamaha R1.

When Honda in Japan became aware of ‘Yer Maun’s’ frustration, a factory-spec engine was also supplied from Aaron Slight’s World Superbike team along with a crew of HRC engineers and Showa suspension technicians to aid Joey’s TT bid.

Aged 48, Joey famously repaid Honda’s effort with interest as he triumphed on the SP-1 in the Formula One race after a memorable duel with Yorkshireman Jefferies, whose Yamaha developed clutch trouble on the fifth lap of six when there was virtually nothing between them on corrected time.

Joey claimed his seventh victory in the first TT race of the new Millennium and went on to win the Lightweight 250cc and Ultra-Lightweight 125cc races on the Bertie Payne and Andy McMenemy Honda machines respectively, sealing his third career hat-trick.

He also finished fourth in the Junior 600 race on John Harris’ Honda and capped race week with a podium in the Senior, when Joey – exhausted from his exertions over the past six days – nonetheless recorded his fastest ever TT speed at 123.87mph on his final ever lap of the Mountain Course.

It was a special week for Joey and his young family, who were fittingly there to witness what proved to be the 26-time TT winner’s swansong on Mona’s Isle.

Gary, who was 17 at the time, remembers the day vividly when Joey achieved the one win he wanted more than any other.

“I never saw my dad as relaxed as he was after he won the race that day. It’s not as if he was tense all the time, he was just a funny sort of character,” he told the News Letter in a previous interview, republished to mark the 25th anniversary of Dunlop’s tragic passing. “There were days when we would have woke up on the morning of a race and I’d have come down the stairs for breakfast.

“We’d all have been a bit nervous to see what kind of a mood he was in. If he was quiet, then it meant he was in one of those moods when he was determined, but other times he’d have been laughing and carrying on at the breakfast bar in the house and you’d have known he was only going out for a run around.

“But at the TT in 2000, as soon as the race was over, you knew the job was done.”

He might have been Joey’s son, but in typical understated Dunlop fashion, Gary was scrambling around like any other normal race fan to try and grab a vantage point to watch his father cross the line on the sixth and last lap.

“I was running about everywhere to try and get somewhere to watch, but it was a disaster because even in the paddock you needed a certain pass,” he said. “On the last lap, I paid to get onto the ‘big wheel’ at the funfair to try and see my dad coming over the line.

“My dad would never have pushed for any extra tickets or passes because he had enough on his plate, and we would never have hassled him over it either; that’s just the way it was.

“That was the one he really wanted and on that day, I remember he was so pumped up, so determined, but in his own very quiet way.

“He had worked all year for this and in practice week he had started to look a bit disappointed with how things were going, but Robert did a great job that week for my dad.

“He did a lot of the talking and organising, and he was a big help.”

Gary recalls the disappointment on Joey’s face when he rode the Honda Fireblade he had been given for the 2000 season at Aghadowey for the first time 25 years ago.

The bike simply wasn’t good enough and Joey knew it would be no match for Jefferies and Yamaha at the TT.

“He rode the Honda Fireblade at the closed-to-club meeting at Aghadowey at the beginning of the year and the bike was no good,” Gary added.

“I remember my dad came in and he just stood and looked at the bike and was shaking his head. That’s whenever he knew that he needed something better.

“After the North West, Bob McMillan pushed Honda to give my dad something for the TT and Honda wanted it to happen as well to be fair. They went to Cadwell Park for a test and I can remember speaking to my dad about it on the phone.

“He shocked a lot of people because he was nearly fastest at that test.

“Jim Moodie wasn’t happy that he didn’t get the SP-1 and he actually left Honda after the TT and joined V&M Yamaha for the rest of the British championship.

“But Honda gave the bike to my dad and he won the race.

“He was knackered by the end of race week and he’d have been the first to admit that himself, but he still did his fastest ever lap at 123.8mph in the Senior.”