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MSA British
Hill Climb Championship |
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Hi All, Here the latest from my Hillclimbing (this weekend just gone was at Wiscombe Park 30th & 31st July) Summary Rain influenced play a bit this weekend but then I didn't drive all that well either. I am now second on my own in the Championship with Martin Groves way ahead and Roger Moran just a single point behind (neither of us had that good a weekend) and Mike Dean now really snapping at our heels and just 2 points behind Roger. Mike is something of a paddock favourite to take "my" second place. I imagine David Gould is giving him the same advice I'm getting from Mike Pilbeam - just score more points than that Toet/Dean/Moran bloke! It looks like being a good battle between Roger, Mike and I with Simon Durling getting closer as well and Scott Moran sneaking up there too. Rob Turnbull had a poor day in the sister Edwards Hospitality www.edwards-hospitality.co.uk supported car with a straight on at the last corner after qualifying well so not a great day for the team. In the afternoon rain fell towards the end of the batch before the main "normal" top runners and continued though our batch which eliminated any chance of qualifying successfully. This gave some others a real chance and of the regular bunch Scott Moran and Paul Ranson were the points winners. The real winners were Will Mason in the Reynard (first ever British Championship Win - and Father time was SO proud), Tom New (another great 2nd place in the 2 litre Pilbeam) and Phil Davies in the 1100 ( yes 1100 cc) Force (brave lad!). Results for the first event already available on www.top12runoff.co.uk with second event available soon. For pictures and access to DVD's of video footage see www.2t4t.co.uk. Next event is at Craigantlet in Northern Ireland http://www.ulsterac.dircon.co.uk/ Wiscombe
With all prepared
for me by the boys I decided to travel down from home on Saturday morning rather
than on Friday evening. There couldn't possibly be traffic problems at 7am in
the morning on the M5 could there? Oh yes there could! The journey though
took not that much more than 3 hours which in the end isn't that bad. Practice
went OK although the conditions weren't consistent which always makes things
difficult. The boys did a great job as normal; we were in FORCE territory here
so we had Bill, Livvy, Lloyd, Donna, Colin, Dave and
Practice finished early so like the optimist I am I decided to go home. The scramble for "my" prime sleeping space in the cab of the truck (as No. 1 driver I get the best of course!!) started immediately I announced that I was going home - I don't know who won the arm twisting contest - thought it best not to ask! How bad could the journey home be anyway? Well the M5 car park was in fine form with bad weather combined with little accidents causing miles and miles of very slow traffic. It seems that every time someone parked at the side of the road for whatever reason everyone driving past has to slow to a crawl to have a good look. Oh don't you just love it! Anyway about two hours after I had hoped I did eventually get home and was able to spend some time with Sue which is always a bonus. Also managed to convince her to come with me for Sunday, great! 4:30 rise to drive to Wiscombe wasn't Sue's idea of fun, but she actually managed to sleep a bit in the car which helped. We got another practice run in the morning which was a bonus and managed to then qualify well (2nd) for the first runoff. However in the runoff I really struggled to control the back end of the car, so much so that I thought something had broken. I stopped pushing half way through the climb and had to settle for a fairly poor 7th place. Rob Turnbull in the other Paul Edwards car had qualified 7th but had an intermittent engine problem which caused a relatively harmless spin. The afternoon was a washout for those of the contenders who were in the "main" batch because of rain which started just before we were due to go out for our runs. It's one of the things that's "not fair" about hillclimbing because conditions are not the same for everyone. However our loss was someone else's gain and there were some new names on the list again this time. Next event is at Craigantlet where we see some high speed and high G corners (for hillclimbing anyway). Should be fun and I did well there last year bringing home the "Dunlop Trophy" which dates back to 1926. What a piece of history. Regrettably I had to send it back recently so they could engrave my name on it and have it ready for this year's event.
Big thanks to the boys for all their help - Bill, Colin, Steve thanks guys. Here are the Wiscombe Park results......
Top12Table (with a few more places....- note they are my calcs not the official ones).
All the best to you Willem
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