Nothin' But a Good Time
The Midland Automobile Club welcomed The British Hillclimb Championship and the Midland Hill Climb Championship back to Shelsley Walsh, for their final visits of the season to the Worcestershire hill.
The Championship Challenge meeting on 20th and 21st August had a full entry, including all the championship leading contenders, who at this stage in the season are battling for precious championship points. With only four more events before the Champions are crowned, there was everything to play for.
Saturday dawned with heavy rain showers sweeping across the valley, punctuated by warm sunshine before raining yet again: a weather pattern that continued throughout practice. The forecast for Sunday's timed runs showed sunny, dry conditions, making Saturday's wet practice runs somewhat futile.
As is now the norm, the 1100cc racing car class once again had a bumper number of runners, 23 in total. The morning timed runs put Simon Fidoe at the top of the class on 27.44s a tenth of a second ahead of Tom Poole 27.54s, who was in turn two tenths in front of Harry Pick 27.73s (OMS 2000M) and in fifth place Simon Andrews 28.02s (OMS 28). Steve Owen (OMS 28 BMW) snatched sixth place with his 28.25s climb.
As track conditions improved during the day, the afternoon runs were in general faster. In the class for racing cars up to 1100cc the win went to Tom Poole 26.99s, second was Simon Fidoe 27.00s and third was Harry Pick on a personal best time in the OMS 2000M, 27.26 seconds.
Given that Harry runs a standard Suzuki 998cc engine as compared with the tuned 1070cc power unit in the class winning car, a quarter second difference between them was pretty impressive on this power hill.
Click here to view Harry Pick's onboard camera showing his 27.26s run.
Steve Owen put a quicker second timed run together 27.68 seconds, moving him up a place into fifth overall in the class.
OMS 28 BMW driven here by Lynn Owen
Forced induction racing cars up to two litres included Lee Griffiths in his OMS 25 1300t. At lunchtime Lee was sitting third in class on his morning run time 26.34s, just one tenth behind second placed Peter Marsh 26.24s. Unlike the class front runners, Lee didn't improve his time during the afternoon runs and this pushed him down to fifth overall in the class.
The only OMS driver to qualify for each of the BHC top twelve run offs was Trevor Willis (OMS 28 RPEV8). His morning run qualified him sixth fastest. When he reviewed the logged data, he had made some errors that lost him time. His run off climb 23.86s placed him third, with round 25 being won by Wallace Menzies on 23.06 seconds and Scott Moran second, on 23.54s.
Round 26 was won by Scott Moran 23.03s, who also took fastest time of day. Trevor's 23.67s climb left him in fourth position, having been edged out by Dave Uren 23.55s and Wallace Menzies 23.22s.
Trevor still holds onto second overall in the BHC with Scott Moran in first place, who has a comfortable lead as we move into the last eight rounds this season.
To view the meeting results click here and to see class run times and splits click here. The British Hillclimb and Hillclimb Leaders point's tables can be viewed here.
Date: 22/08/2016 | Author: L.Owen