I've Got the Power
The Bank Holiday weekend saw the Avon Tyres TTC Group MSA British Hillclimb circus move to the southwest of England, for rounds 7 and 8 of the championship. An acknowledged power hill, Gurston Down near Salisbury in Wiltshire, favours the large capacity V8 single seater racing cars.
With no OMS sports cars present, the first class to feature was racing cars up to 600cc where hillclimb stalwarts Steve Owen a Gary Hill drove their OMS Hornet. Sounding more like a grass strimmer, when the Hornet came into sight there were no more revs to be had, as the drivers wrung everything from this spirited little car. Class honours went to Steve with a time of 33.09 and Gary in second place on 33.81 seconds.
Four OMS drivers in the 1100cc racing car class finished in Leaders Championship points scoring positions. Simon Andrews and Bernard Kevill had a fabulous weekend with both drivers achieving personal best times in the OMS 2000M. Simon's time of 30.63 also gave him second in the class and Bernard's time of 31.44 placed him 4th in class. New OMS 2000M owner James Moore (who recently purchased the car from Harewood regular Graham Smith) finished an excellent 5th in class with a time of 32.05 on his first meeting at Gurston in the car. The top six were rounded off with Euan Kemp on 32.74 seconds in the OMS P/R he usually shares with his brother Calum.
The only OMS driver in racing cars up to 1600cc was Gurston local James Blackmore in his OMS 25. James didn't match his usual Gurston pace this weekend, finishing on 29.35 seconds and taking 5th in class.
Ian Fidoe and Tim Elmer were nonstarters in their 2 litre OMS CF09 following an engine failure earlier in the season. Speaking with Ian at the meeting, he said as yet they have not established the exact cause of the dropped valves which caused considerable damage to one of the cylinders, but are in the process of rebuilding the engine and hopeful of being out again soon. Steve Boother was another nonstarter, his 1100cc OMS 2000M completed Saturday practice, but the gearbox was causing him concern and he elected to retire from the meeting to return home to strip the engine and box.
The final OMS driver of the weekend was 2012 British Hillclimb Champion Trevor Willis in the V8 OMS 28. Gurston is a venue where the power of the big V8 engines really comes into play and the PowerTec V8 has less torque & bhp than these engines. Whilst Trevor achieves a top speed of around 135 mph at the finish, other drivers are reaching speeds of up to 152 mph on the drag up to the finish: clearly a big power disadvantage.
Trevor's strength lies in the cars handling & cornering speeds, which is where he claws back time from the other drivers. His best class time was a 26.60 leaving him in 2nd place behind the class winner Scott Moran on 25.56 seconds. Trevor's class runs qualified him second fastest in each of the two championship Top 12 Run Offs and he finished in 3rd place in both run offs, beating a number of more powerful cars to take 16 championship points away from this meeting.
All the run times and class results can be found here.
Click here to see the British Hillclimb Championship points table and driver positions.
Date: 27/05/2013 | Author: L.Owen