Starting Over
After what has seemed a very short off season we are starting all over again, with the 2016 British Hillclimb Championship calendar of events. The first major national speed hillclimb meeting of the year was held at Prescott Hill Climb on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th May.
Hosted by The Bugatti Owner's Club, the meeting was the opening round of the BMTR Midland Hill Climb Championship and the MSA Avon Tyres/ TTC Group British Hillclimb and Hillclimb Leaders Championships 2016.
There were a number of changes to the usual driver/car line up, with some drivers having decided not to compete this season. John Bradburn and Tom New who finished in the top 10 last season, will not be defending their championship positions. Some drivers have already started over with new cars for the 2016 season, whilst others are awaiting delivery of their new cars later in the season.
In the OMS camp John Stockley has moved from the class for racing cars up to 1600cc, having had Steve Owen install a Suzuki GSXR K8 1000cc engine into his 2000M chassis over the winter. John's best time this weekend was a 42.84s run placing him tenth in class, with 21 entries in this increasingly popular 1100cc racing car class.
New OMS owners Trish and Terry Davis are driving the ex-Ian Fidoe OMS CF09 this season, having purchased the car during the winter. It runs a TKD YV8 engine designed and built by Terry himself, the engine that Ian used in this car for the past couple of seasons. Running in the normally aspirated 2 litre racing car class, Terry finished fourth with his best time 41.57s, Trish finished eighth overall on her fastest run time 43.77s. Both drivers set very respectable times having only driven the car a handful of times prior to this event.
Following his incident at the season finale meeting at Loton Park last September and a car rebuild, Lee Griffiths bounced back in fine style taking second in class with a best time of 40.54 seconds. Lee also qualified for the second of the two British Hillclimb Championship top twelve run offs, finishing outside of the points. A good weekend for Lee nevertheless.
Car number 2 driven by Trevor Willis has undergone an overhaul of its aerodynamics and a programme of weight saving in order to improve the car's performance against the higher powered competition at the sharp end of the British Championship. It took Trevor a few runs to dial the car in and there is still more to come, though he still managed to finish third in class just a tenth of a second behind multiple champion Scott Moran and qualify for both of the BHC run offs. His fastest time of the weekend 36.71s in the second run off was close to his best time last season and a good starting point from which to improve. And as with all things time will tell.
To view the British and Leaders Championship results and tables click here and to see class times on Resultsman click here.
Date: 25/04/2016 | Author: L.Owen