Stop The Pigeon
The MSA British Hillclimb and the Hillclimb Leaders Championships made their way to Harewood for the first of two visits in 2015.
Following a shuffle of championship event dates for 2015 that has seen the Craigantlet meeting brought forward from its usual August slot into May and the traditional May Barbon - Harewood weekend moving back to July, this weekend's event at Harewood became a two day national meeting.
Running alongside the British and Leaders event was a round of the Harewood Speed Championship on the Saturday. 2014 Harewood FTD Champion Paul Martin took fastest time of day in the 1300cc OMS 2000M on 56.56 seconds, whilst fellow OMS driver Richard Vaughan was third FTD with his best climb of 57.95 seconds in his 1100cc OMS PR.
Sunday brought kinder weather conditions and was certainly several degrees warmer than the previous day. With good track conditions a number of records fell during the course of the meeting.
Gary Hill and Harry Pick were once again in the 600cc OMS Hornet. Harry's best time was 58.07 whilst Gary only managed the one timed run 58.38 due to a battery failure at the start line on his second climb. Bernie Kevill finished ahead of the 600cc Hornet pairing on 57.74 whilst Mark Goodyear in his 1000cc Hornet secured third place with 56.23 seconds. Simon Andrews was leading the class after the morning runs, but failed to improve on his second climb having hit a pigeon as he came up the main straight, leaving him in second place on 55.95
Paul Martin ran again on Sunday and set a new personal best time of 55.36 seconds to finish off a great weekend for him: congratulations Paul. Another Paul running in the 1600cc class was Paul Gibson with the ex-Dave Boland/Craig Bates OMS 2000M. Steve Owen's fastest run time of 52.72 was only good enough for fourth in class; such was the fierce pace for the top spot.
Lee Griffiths set a new PB 53.46 with the turbo charged Hayabusa OMS 25 placing him fourth in the 2 litre racing car class.
Also in an OMS 25 but with an RPE V8 power unit, Jason Mourant finished on 52.91 seconds in the big single seater class. Running in the same class was Trevor Willis with his OMS 28 RPE V8, his best run at 50.35 took fourth in class.
Trevor qualified for both of the British Championship Top twelve run offs, taking a win in the first by two hundredths of a second on 49.15 ahead of second placed Alex Summers with 49.17. In the second run off an error at Orchard Bend cost Trevor time, leaving him back in fifth overall.
Trevor's run off winning time of 49.15 was also third fastest time of day.
To view results and splits click here and to see the British Championship table after rounds 5 & 6 click here.
Date: 11/05/2015 | Author: L.Owen