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DETROIT — Dave Villwock has enjoyed the pinnacle of success in unlimited hydroplane racing with the biggest, baddest, most highly financed team in the sport, the Miss Budweiser team.

But it’s now that the Gold Cup feels so real and so well deserved and appreciated.

Villwock won his sixth Chrysler Jeep Superstores APBA Gold Cup on Sunday on the Detroit River in the 99th running of the event, this time with the U-16 Miss Elam Plus owned by Erick Ellstrom. Steve David finished second in Oh Boy! Oberto, and J. Michael Kelly was third in Spirit of Detroit. Jimmy King, of Wales, Mich., failed to finish and placed fifth in the six-boat field.

“This one is by far the best,” Villwock said, when asked to rate where this Gold Cup stands in his career. “It’s the people we’re doing it with. (They) are not a group of professionals or technicians who were hired guns to do a particular job as the Budweiser team. They were great people, love them, but they were professionals.

“This is a group of friends that came together for a common goal to run this boat.”

Villwock was the dominant driver all weekend, winning all three qualification heats heading into the Gold Cup. He has now won all three races this season. The Gold Cup brings his career total victories to 55, as he continues to make an assault on the record books.

Bill Muncey is the career leader with 62 and Chip Hanauer has 61. Hanauer leads all drivers with 11 Gold Cups and, with this victory, Villwock passed Gar Wood and sits third.

The first attempt to run the Gold Cup was black-flagged when Mike Allen’s U-1 flipped midway down the front straightaway during the third lap. Allen, whose boat landed cockpit down, immediately was rescued and was examined by on-site doctors. He was alert and speaking but was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital to care for a previous injury.

Allen underwent surgery two weeks ago on his left hand. He had six screws and a metal plate inserted and, after the incident Sunday, the unlimited hydroplane medical staff felt it best for Allen to have the wound cleaned.

The Gold Cup was restarted an hour after the incident. Villwock said he spent the time trying to determine if, based on Gold Cup rules, whether he had already won the race.

“The rules say if you’ve gone 50 percent of the heat, it’s over,” he said. “Well, looked to us like we had gone 50 percent, so we were trying to discuss that.”

Race directors thought otherwise and said the race would be run in full again.

“The start of an unlimited hydroplane race is probably the most intense of any motor sport in the world,” Villwock said. “Anything that can happen will and often does. And so, once you get by the start and get in the lead, you’ve pretty much got it made and then when something like that happens, it’s a redo, so there’s all that opportunity to fail again, and we managed not to do that.”

In the restarted Gold Cup, David craftily made the move for lane two, leaving Villwock lane one as his only option.

“That was a good play on Steve David’s part,” Villwock said. “I’ve said that a lot of times — lane one isn’t the place to be. Ninety nine percent of the time it’s not. Chip Hanauer told me that years ago.

“There was no place else for me to go. I took that spot. We weren’t really set up for that, but I got a good enough start and got a good enough run through the first turn, we got our nose out front and that got us in control.”

Villwock was never challenged after taking the lead.

For Ellstrom, whose family has been in the sport for 12 years as owners, the victory came only four days after his mother, Kersten, passed away.

“This is a great race — and I’ve tried forever to win this race — so winning it is unbelievable,” Ellstrom said.

Defending champion Jean Theoret failed to make the Gold Cup final. In the last elimination heat, he hooked a sponson in the third turn of the last lap, taking out a buoy, and was knocked out of the final.