how was your gathering?

I have this feeling as well! Only complaint is it is so awesome, it sucks to go back to reality

Also I can totally see the reasons why but it's a shame people weren't allowed to chuck the cars around a bit more (on the track obviously), the escort got a massive cheer as he went sideways but I fear he may have got a bit of a telling off for it.

Quick thought on the demand for hill action that may or may not be helpful....

Run it as a 'lottery' so that everyone that expresses interest (by filling in the form & showing the documents) gets a raffle ticket and then those picked out get to run. Winning ticket numbers would be noted down and driver would have to show their ticket to get into a briefing. Probably difficult to arrange in time for the morning runs but if a draw was done at say 11:30 it would let late comers enter the fray and be in with a chance of an afternoon run, while allowing long enough for the safety talk/wrist band distribution before the lunch break for the lucky folk picked out.

OK my review of RRG2012

Tugged the Monza on a trailer from Norfolk to Prescott – combined trailer weight 2000 kgs – less said about mpg the better but I got caught in loads of traffic and road works as well as having to do a detour to drop off some wheels and the actual journey was a 16.5mpg average from the 740.

Camping – turned up early (way early for me) on Friday late afternoon – got the heads up from Keefy on the phone not to try and get the trailer on the camp site so found some hard standing in the pit area initially and then later in the farmers yard – brought a tray of donuts with me and forced them on as many people that would accept one.

Got the camping area on the quiet side and set up – spotted the Dave and the mighty avenger arrive and I think I was first to put a cold beer in his hand (yes) and after some burgers went on a wander with a bottle of 2 yr old slo Vodka (this is vintage in my book/house) ended up at the “Bedouin Temple” (James and Michelle’s gaff) and had a great night of conversation and homemade ginger beer and lemon gin accompanied the slo vodka. Diablo, Brian Damaged, Johnny 69, Pollit and various others that dropped in. A camp site wander meant I caught up with lots of other RR peeps and also enabled my earlier company to shake me off – but we met up again later.

Sat morning was a comfortably slow start plenty of coffee and orange juice as well as a few bacon rolls and then off to Shelsey Walsh for the practice day. I had offered Alex a lift so he kept me company for the journey there and back but whilst we were there we did our own thing. Shelsey is completely different to Prescott – only really 2 slow corners but a lot of fast kinks and probably more elevation change too – fastest car was hitting 129mph thro the speed trap before the S’s and although the absolute course record is 22 secs the track was greasy and damp in places but the fastest cars were still running mid 24’s

Thanks to Keefy for organising the discounted tickets as it was a great experience and I took 1240 pictures the best of which I will share as soon as I’ve sorted the pictures out – if you didn’t go I’d recommend this day out to anyone.

First thing for Sat evening was unload the Monza and get it to the pits and in doing that I realised I had a serious problem – something had come loose in the column on the journey – last time I used it was at Snetterton and it was fine there but I had 45-90 degrees of free play in the steering and it was all in the column and very visible. When I modified the column earlier this year it was a suck it and see experiment and I took a spare std column to France just in case but as it had been fine for Croix and Snetterton I hadn’t thought to bring a spare – luckily long time lurker on here Paul was coming to the show Sunday so I rang him and he said he’d bring the spare column from Norfolk with him.

A quieter evening on Sat night – used the facilities of the clubhouse – chicken curry rice and a naan bread for £5.95 washed down with a pint of hill climb was just wonderful especially as I had the company of utterpiffle and bigperm as well as a few others who I’d never met before but as I needed to keep my head clear for an earlier start I had a wander round the camp site and then decided a semi early night would be good.

So Sunday there was a show and as usual I didn’t see a thing – not a problem because I’m doing what I love to do helping organise the hill climb. Everyone I spoke to loved the experience and I think it flowed pretty well but we have some things to resolve for next time and I think I’d like to deal with the hill climb issues in the original info thread as it would be much better dealt with there. I am reading all the comments and suggestions specifically about the hill climb content and running so will make sure I come back to that.

Paul turned up with column and left it by the Monza but seeing I was a smidge busy actually fitted it for me while I got the hill climb running smoothly – thanks Paul and whatever I can do to get your ex-“thunder saloon” Monza finished for next year’s RRG just shout – RR peeps it’s already awesome (I’ve given up trying to get him to do a build thread anywhere) but it’s going to be so much more awesome running up the hill with 10inch split rims under huge arches and a race car running height (dropped to the floor on custom coilovers), 4 litre straight six camed to hell on throttle bodies providing the substantial push and a minimally silenced side exit exhaust.

Good news for me was I got to run the Monza up the hill a few times and as a few people thought and asked no I wasn’t 10/10ths – I’d stuck a 6500 rpm rev limiter in (normal running it’s 8000 rpm) as well as a db killer up the exhaust (which robs a fair bit of power) but I did that for a few reasons one was I didn’t want to have a incident having asked so many people not to silly and pace themselves (limited track time and a big clear up means less track time for everyone) and the second one was I was on slicks (ooops) and they don’t come up to temperature until quite a way up the hill – it didn’t feel like I had good grip at the front till the hairpin. Lastly I kinda had a role within a team of people running the pit area so having an off wouldn’t have been fair.

By just after 4pm I was pretty much toast but seeing the smiles on people faces and hearing some of the comments about the rest of the show made it all worthwhile.

I stayed Sun night and was really gutted to hear John's feedback first hand regarding some idiots who were camped near him - the one thing about the camping has always been self policing, friendly and superb fun even when people are fairly well tiddled - maybe it was too big this year.......... In fact this was the low point for me and has taken a lot of the shine of the weekend.

Monday morning after packing my gear and loading the Monza I helped Keefy to clear the remaining bits and pieces and then rolled home – virtually traffic free apart from the last 10 miles and the BMW returned 25.9 mpg! – must have been a bit lighter on beer and food than on the journey there.

First time at the gathering and I absolutely loved it. The atmosphere was fantastic and is unlike any other show I've been to. I also like the fact that there's no show and shine which keeps people who only come to these things to win trophies away. Everyone I met was friendly and happy to talk, especially in the hill climb paddock , comparing runs with other drivers made the wait between runs fly by.

I was also pleasently surprised by how cheap the food was on show day, I can't remember the last time I saw a flake 99 so cheap!

I think the hill climb worked very well, and all the Marshalls from both Prescott and RR did a great job and were all very friendly. The only change I would make is perhaps open the afternoon session booking later in the day to allow late arrivers a change of a go. Also in the morning people were being allowed to book into both morning and afternoon sessions, I was under the impression that this wasn't allowed?



In defense of Hamish, the car went be mapped before the show but it reached a performance bottleneck with the wastegate being to small, he sourced and fitted a larger one before the show but couldn't get the car mapped in time so it was only running half power. It was also the first time he's driven the car in anger. The car has been built for competitive hillclimb use so he wasn't holding back for fear of scratching the paint or anything like that.

OK I'll deal with the other Hill climb comments in another thread but you raise a very good point - it resulted in a lot of discussion before the event and it really was a difficult decision we went with yes to booking both - we've reviewed it after even though it was only 5 cars (pretty sure about that as I did the stickering) if we run the event in the same way we are all in agreement that will not allow it to happen again

Sorry but we get it wrong sometimes - helps us learn

A top day! only problem was the mix up with forms in the morning resulted in my passenger only getting her band as the car was idling to the start line, don't understand why passengers had to attend a driver briefing? But this seemed to be venue staff rule not RR staff!? But I must say the staff in orange t-shirts put on a good show and kept everyone moving once it started.

I hope to return next year with more power in the MG and even 2nd gear if I'm lucky.

Since the weekend, I'm sooooo tempted to sell the yank and buy something old and J. what have you guys done to me lol

Hmm. Wiscombe? Another interesting hill in a nice place - and there's only the one house at the end of the drive.



Too right. ;D



I'm on the forum quite a bit, and found this too. For example, I missed the awards because there was - AFAIK - no information given beforehand and I was up the hill at the time. I know it's all rather laid-back, but a little more communication wouldn't go amiss.

I appreciate that the printing costs and admin time would be high, but perhaps a crib sheet sent out with the pre-ordered tickets and stapled to the on-the-gate tickets?

well, what can i say, brilliant weekend. very proud of the rapid getting there, up the track and back home with no hiccups.

started a bit shakey on friday at 5pm, as we were setting off jikovron's blue v8 dolly decided to throw its temperature gauge right into the red, after some fettling and touching of the engine it was decided the thermostat was p*ssing us around. so the 2 car convoy was on its way. got there at half 7ish to be greeted by pandaselecta with our tickets and surprisingskoda with a cool box.
the camp was set up and beers drunk.
the next day saw the arrival of skoda_norman to our camp and teh meeting of lots of cracking people through the day and of course more alcohol.
sunday was even better with all the track based action and the epic cars on show.
the only bad part for me was my own embarasment when going up the track and grinding my way into third gear with all the crowd's eyes looking at me. oh well lol can't win 'em all.

can't wait for rrg'13. need more car and camping action right now. massive cheers to all the guys and gals involved in the organising and running of the best weekend of the year, and pandaselecta for getting 4 tickets at such short notice. see y'all next year