A wee yarn from a wannabe racing driver - Round 3 MIRA

so,hang on there , you spent more on coffee & cakes than on fuel

Interesting issues with eligibility? Formula Libre here in Australia is a wild class - generally motorcycles engined specials, mostly open wheelers but there have been a couple of converted hatchbacks as well (and an IMP!)

Our "touring car" classes for hill climbs go like this:

Type 1 - stock standard. Tyres must be road legal and exact same size as stock
Type 2 - Minor mods allowed - shocks, springs, wheels can go +1" in width, tyres must be road legal, cams, extractors and the like are allowed, but intake must use stock manifold, although carbs and TB's can be upgraded (i.e. you can change from a twin throat to a bigger twin throat, or go from 40mm to 45mm sidedrafts if the car came with them stock)
Type 3 - last step of possibly road legal cars in the class structure. Engine swaps are allowed but must be same configuration as stock and same manufacturer (so Ford Escort can run a Duratec for example, although it does get murky sometimes with various badge engineering over the years), inlet is free, exhaust free. Tyres are still limited to road legal. Turbo cars have to run a restrictor (36mm)
Type 4 - think Thunder Saloons/ Sports Sedans. FRP panels, spaceframing, Engines are free, slicks are allowed. Cages are required
Type SV - basically anything that doesn't fit in the above categories, but is still road registered. Tends to be populated by kit cars, stuff with weird engine swaps and late model turbo cars

I think perhaps because most of our hillclimbs are heavily populated with tin-tops maybe we just have more classes for them? At a local meet there will be maybe 2 or 3 Formula Libre cars, a few clubmans and the other 50 cars will be road registered or close to it
Sounds

Yeah its not a bad set up!

I actually competed yesterday, had grand plans to try and do a similar thing to you and document it all. But between the rain and the general hurrying of a regular race day I took exactly zero pictures haha. Major props to you for taking the time to document it all, I don't know how you do it!

Here is a video from our now sadly defunct King Edward Park Hillclimb. Lovely bit of public road right on the coast here in Newcastle



Our licensing structure is a lot different too.We have Level 2 Non-Speed (motorkhanas and those sort of events) Level 2 Speed (hillclimbs, lap dashes/supersprints, some rallysprints). These are just a fill out your form and pay affair, its not until you get into proper rally sprints, stage rallying and circuit racing that you need to have actual Observed License Tests (OLTs) full medicals, etc etc

This is an absolutely brilliant read! I have been looking into getting into hillclimbing quite seriously lately (I notice you mentioned young blood) I'm a tender 24 currently, considering buying a mini and building a fast road/hillclimb specific car.

Keep updating, its a really great insight, hopefully will see the car about as I am going to attend a few days to get a proper feel for it!

was looking to see if you where going to do a seperate thread for shelsley

Is there a separate thread? If so i can't find it.

Afraid it's been a crazy busy week and probably won't have time to sit down until after round 3 now by the looks of it!

Photos look great, thanks for those will endeavour to make some time for a write up!

Well that was a busy couple of weeks – note to self, three race weekends in three weeks is probably a bit much!

Apologies to those who’ve been waiting, I’ve actually got most of a day off, so I’ll endeavour to catch up.

Round 2 - Shelsley Walsh

My first 2 day event, practice Saturday and Race Sunday. Sign on and scrutineering was open pretty much all day Saturday, basically turn up, sign on, get scrutineered and then choose a couple of batches to run in – Shelsey runs batches of cars due to the lack of a return road, so after a group has gone up everyone comes down together, then the next batch goes up.

Perfect, can have a lie in (i.e. get up at 7 rather than 6!). This is after another late night load up, apparently getting ready for the next day can’t be concluded before 11pm…

Saturday broke with bright sun, and a light frost. An hour or so drive and we’re pulling into the competitor parking at the bottom of the hill.

Shelsley Walsh – the oldest motorsport venue in the world still to run events on the original course and in continuous use. And of course, current home of Retro Rides Gathering. There is a lot of history distilled into this place.






We show up at about 9am, and I head to sign on – all very relaxed. I get my piece of blue card (know what this is for!) and then bring the car into the paddock. The nice thing about Shelsley is that almost everyone gets one of the little ‘garages’ so when the weather turns (as it surely will) not everything has to get soaked. I’m parked across from a nice range of Porsches and get talking to a couple of the owners about their pride and joys – It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s such a friendly atmosphere hillclimbing, possibly even more so here, guess that’s down to the more relaxed nature of a 2 day event.



At this point I hunt down a Scrutineer and get everything checked and my blue card signed. This is hand I head back to the race office to sign up to a couple of practice run batches. The system used here means you, give or take, get to choose when you’ll run – so I elect to go fairly soon in the morning, and then just after lunch. This way I should get a couple of dry runs, and will get an early finish to head home and get on with other jobs (yes we’re renovating a Victorian cottage as well as keeping a fleet of classics running!)

The track itself appears quite a simple affair, only a 1000 yards long and with only a couple of slow corners at the top:




There are two things that make it somehow more of a challenge than Prescott though:

1) The gradient – obviously it’s a hillclimb, so there is a hill involved, but Shelsley is deceptively steep. This means the car accels slower than you first expect, so you can use more throttle than you first think. But most importantly it means there’s a big amount of gravity braking involved in slowing down for Bottom ‘S’. This results in me basically coming to a stop well before the apex to start with – it is very obvious I don’t really know what I’m doing!

2) There are some very high, very solid banks some with railway sleepers embedded into them. This is not a forgiving track and it is very easy to take a corner off a car, or worse…

This is a great thread!! A friend of mine has been hill climbing nationally for years after doing some other things and I've helped out with the running of things a couple of times.

It's so great to see the kind of information that you've shared here as it's the kind of thing that I probably wouldn't want to ask about (so thanks for sharing!!).

Good luck for the rest of the season! I hope the car treats you well and the times keep going the right way!!

Oh, and I said to my girlfriend, " look how affordable hillclimbing is!!" with a pleading look on my face.

She snorted and walked away......

ATB
Liam