2015 - How was it for me?

If you are a member of the HSA or a subscriber to 'Speedscene' magazine you will have seen this article in the latest issue (number 186) but now that it has been published there I thought I would put it on the blog with a few more pictures for those who do not get a chance to see 'Speedscene'. I have also added my own personal top ten drivers of the year at the end.

When I retired in 2014 I decided that it would be a good idea to have an annual project, and last year I visited a motor race meeting at all of the 15 circuits on the British mainland, which I wrote about in a blog - http://50yearsmotorracing.blogspot.co.uk/. For 2015 I turned my attention to the hills, and in particular the British Hillclimb Championship (BHC), and resolved that I would attend every round of the Championship including those on the Channel Islands and at Craigantlet.

I have followed hillclimbing since 1968 when Doune first opened and over the years have attended many events at Shelsley Walsh, Prescott, Doune and Gurston Down, and one at Loton Park but that still left a number of gaps, even on the mainland – Harewood, Barbon Manor and Wisombe Park which had always seemed far away from my base in Bedford.

Here we are now, in early October, and the project has been finished, a blog has been written - http://hillclimbtour2015.blogspot.co.uk/ and there are albums of photographs on Flickr for anybody to look at - https://www.flickr.com/photos/125284417@N04/collections/72157652249750661/

Having done all the travelling with only myself to look after I have come to appreciate the time and effort involved in competing in the BHC and the associated Leaders Championship by those who have to transport their cars, spares, tools etc. around the country at a much slower pace than I was able to do unencumbered by a trailer or motorhome. There can be very few other Championships which demand as much time from the competitors - 15 weekends out of 23 between the end of April and the end of September do not leave much time in between to re-fettle cars, have a holiday, deal with other family issues etc., in particular the period in June where Shelsley, Loton and Doune fall on consecutive weekends.

I was able to persuade my wife that this project was going to be a good idea by taking her with me to the Channel Islands (where we had been last year on a longer holiday) and then from there for a week in Devon before finishing off at Wiscombe. Fortunately she was able to find lots to do and buy in St Helier, St Peter Port and Exeter while I spectated! I also promised to visit my mother-in-law when I was in Scotland!

Now at the end of the season it is the time to look back and reflect on what I experienced as I travelled around the hills. People have already asked me what my favourite hill was and I have to say that they all have their pros and cons for the spectator. I always get thrilled by the sheer gladiatorial feel of Shelsley as the cars enter the bowl of the bottom ess and that is of course enhanced by the large crowds that are always present.

For overall viewing, nothing can beat Harewood when seen from the paddock with the whole hill laid out below you, though I could not get excited by the first half of the course which seems too contrived and I think I would have liked the original, shorter, course better.

That reaction also applies to Loton where the first part of the hill is actually out of sight of spectators and yet includes a number of tricky corners.

Doune is a superb venue, particularly in the lower reaches where the sight of a single seater at full chat between the walls takes your breath away – I physically stood back when I saw Jos Goodyear come through as I could not believe he would actually avoid hitting the side!

My visit to Craigantlet was badly affected by the weather and I missed the second runs. I had flown over and, unfortunately, I had to leave Craigantlet before the second runs began because by that time it was half past 4 and I really wanted to dry out before getting on to my flight home! I will definitely return there for a chance to view it in good weather.

It was very wet at Craigantlet

That was the only competitive action I missed all year though some of the time I spent in the various paddocks watching the preparation for the runs rather than the runs themselves.

I will also try and return to Wiscombe which did not really get a fair chance to impress me because of the wet conditions and where the anticipated state of the paddock by the end of the day led to many competitors not running on the Sunday.

Barbon Manor also provides great viewing and it was a shame that the entry was so small – again I heard that the condition of the paddock at previous events was a probable factor in drivers not entering.

Having mentioned the large crowds at Shelsley, I was quite surprised at how much smaller the crowds were at some of the other venues – maybe in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Does this mean that we are not giving people what they want to see – there are many other distractions these days which did not exist even 30 years ago when I remember the car parks at Doune filling a large field.

The first aim of course is to attract people for the first time and that may mean we have to do more to advertise events – the vast majority of my friends who heard about my project had absolutely no idea what a hillclimb involved.

Secondly we have to give them such a good time that they want to come back again – are our events interesting enough for them to go home and tell their friends about the great day they had? Based on my experience this year here a few comments and ideas which might reach a willing ear somewhere.

One item that helps to keep the spectator interested is the commentary and we have some great people behind the microphones who are very knowledgable and have a great love for hillclimbing. Yet they are hampered at many hills by the fact that they cannot see large parts of the hill from the commentary position. The worst must be Craigantlet where only the first corner can be seen and then the rest has to be filled in by looking at the timing screen and guessing where the car might be. Would it be too much to have another commentary point at May’s Cross say?

The Craigantlet commentary box above and the view from it below

Doune’s commentary box gives a great view of the upper half of the hill only and again another commentary from further down would be a great help for spectators. I think I once heard Steve Wilkinson using a radio microphone near Garden Gate. Shelsley of course is the opposite extreme – three commentary boxes covering the whole hill and a constant observation of each run provided to spectators. By its very nature hillclimbing has long pauses in the action – as cars return to the paddock, when there is an incident, or as the cars get ready for the top-twelve run-off and the commentators do a sterling job at filling the blank time, but sometimes the length of the break is too long for them to keep filling.

To try and fill these blanks and to provide instant information about preparations for the run-off should we be looking to have roving reporters in the paddock. Anyone who saw the TV programme about the Bo’Ness revival will have been captivated by the fascinating people who were caught in the paddock and interviewed by Chris Drewett. That is not unique – every hillclimb paddock is full of characters who could be used to fill the blank spaces when nothing is happening on the hill.

Examples this year where a roving reporter would have been able to add colour were the race to get Wallace Menzies’ car ready for his run at Gurston, after Tom New put it off on his run, and Trevor Willis’ drive shaft change at Doune (see below) – think how much information could have been added to the spectator’s appreciation of the issue that was occurring.

Since I wrote the above for the 'Speedscene' Jerry Sturman has been in touch to discuss some of the technical issues which would hamper my ideas but also reminding me that there is a bit of a dearth of commentators around the country and the sport needs more people to come forward now to be ready to replace the older ones when they retire. Although I am not young myself I have volunteered my services to Jerry for next year at a few events and you may hear a broad Scottish accent booming out over the Downs at intervals. If anybody else out there fancies having a go I am sure that Jerry or any of the other commentators would be happy to have some assistance around the country.

The other source of information for the spectator is the programme and by and large these are well produced, except for two things: one or two have no space to write the times, and congratulations to Doune for fixing that for the September event, and there are some where the quality of the paper does not allow times to be written down by any normal ball – point pen or pencil!! Glossy paper looks good but matt paper is so much more user-friendly in this respect. If you want glossy covers and photos then no problem but maybe the lists of entries could be printed on a different sort of paper – the Silverstone programmes of the 1970s and 1980s managed this perfectly well!

This may all seem like a list of complaints to some of you but I would rather see them as constructive criticisms – ideas that could make hillclimbing more attractive to spectators and thus bring more money into the clubs running the hills and possibly a reduction in entry fees?

Some more ideas that may seem off-the-wall but could at least be trialled. In many other sports where there are two or more timed runs – skiing and bobsledding for example the competitors are sent down on their second run in the reverse order of their times in the first run so that the fastest in the first run always goes last and the excitement is therefore built up as time goes on. Why not do that for the classes in hillclimbing – yes there will be anomalies because of double drives but the general principle could be followed and would work most of the time.

I suggested this to someone and they said it would not work because the organisers would not manage to get the running order re-arranged but we do it for the run-offs – the fastest goes last – and that happens with just half an hour between the qualification and the run-off. The time between two class runs is at least 2 hours and often more and if the organisers cannot sort it out then I am sure the drivers would be able to do it themselves.

It is difficult for the spectators to know at a glance which cars are entered in the BHC and the Leaders – how about having different colours of numbers for those people - so that the BHC for example could have red numbers and the Leaders could have blue numbers?

The champion's car shows off its red numbers though they could be a bit bigger!!

A simple guide for the poor spectator which can be seen even when it is raining and his programme has become a sodden mass! Of course some people enter both championships – but why does that happen – could we not say that you enter either one or the other? So we have a competition for the fastest drivers and then one for the bulk of the entry.

The entry for the Leaders Championship disappointed me. In a number of classes there was only one entrant while others had a very small percentage of the runners actually registered. Away from the BHC registered single-seaters that were entered in the Leaders only 2 drivers participated at every round – Colin Satchell and Alan McDonald (both below),

 
ironically from different ends of the country with probably the most travelling to do, while other regulars like Geoff Twemlow, Anthony Record, Tony Bunker and Andrew Russell also come from the Southern edge of the country. It would be interesting to find out how we could attract more drivers to enter the Leaders.

I asked one driver who has done some Continental hillclimbing about what they had over there that we do not have in Britain and he said – a podium! There is no visible place where the winners are recognised and where there would be a photo opportunity for sponsors, for example, to have their names on the back of the podium! Simple idea – three boxes and a back board!

And so it is time to look forward to next year – the next hillclimb I attend will be my 100th – not a great number for those who travel to a lot of events every year but in the same length of time I have attended 264 race meetings, 33 rallies and 23 sprints as well as a variety of other motorsport events. However I love the atmosphere at hillclimbs and the tension as drivers fight for tenths or even hundredths of a second.

Finally, and in an addition to the article, my top drivers of the year;

- first place, Leaders champion Colin Satchell for his perseverance and for the record breaking speed he got out of the Peugeot 5 times during the year;
- second place, Jos Goodyear for his record breaking run at Barbon Manor, for making me stand back in amazement at Doune and for pure entertainment value, with the very best wishes for a full return to health in 2016;
- third place - a tie actually between Scott Moran and Alex Summers for their speed and consistency;
- fifth place - Dave Uren for taking the little Force to speeds and times that eventually got him 6th in the Championship;

- sixth place - Alan McDonald for the distance he travelled, the ingenuity of his Mini, his helpfulness around the paddock and the fact that he was faster to 64 feet than Nic Mann;
- seventh place - Debbie Dunbar for her class victory at Gurston Down in May in the oh-so competitive 1100 cc racing car class;

- eighth place - Roger Moran for his versatility in driving a multitude of cars through the year;

- ninth place - Tom New - Wallace might have been generally quicker but Tom provided him with an ever-better car throughout the season and also gained his highest finish in the Championship, and
- tenth place - David Finlay and Alasdair Suttie - for providing the spectators with the sight of a VW Touareg, a BMW i8 and an Audi S8 amongst others - we look forward to the variety you will bring us next season!

But to ALL of you drove up the hills in your wonderful and entertaining machinery, all of you who marshalled in the rain at Craigantlet or Wiscombe or in the sunshine at most other places, all of the commentators who kept us informed and the hundreds of other volunteers who helped the organising clubs put on the BHC events of 2015 a very big THANK YOU from a very grateful spectator who thoroughly enjoyed meeting a great bunch of people and seeing some stunning driving in all weathers.

The BHC currently seems to be in good hands with Tim Wilson and I would like to thank him for his help this year. I have been left with many happy memories, and a host of new friends and I am grateful to those who took time to talk to me and to respond to some of my more naive questions. I will not be abandoning you totally in 2016 but will probably not attend quite so many events.

The Longest Day

Between this picture - taken at 8.15 a.m.

and this picture of the Championship Top Ten taken at 6.15 p.m.

stretched a very long day at Loton Park on Sunday.

A number of lengthy delays in the first set of runs meant that they did not finish until after 2 and, after a short lunch break, the second set started at 3.35 and fortunately there were fewer delays.

There may be a number of people reading this who do not attend hillclimbs regularly and so the faces above may be unfamiliar to you so, for the record: sitting in the car is Alex Summers (2015 Champion) and then the others from left to right are Wallace Menzies (3rd), Dave Uren (6th), Scott Moran (4th), Alastair Crawford (8th), Tom New (5th), Will Hall (7th), John Bradburn (standing) (9th), Jos Goodyear (sitting) (10th) and Trevor Willis (2nd).

Alex, of course, had won the Championship last week at Doune but all the other positions were capable of change. Wallace, Trevor and Scott all had their eyes on second but Trevor sealed this with two steady runs to 4th in each run-off. After a second and a third for Wallace and a third and win for Scott they were tied on 205 (for their 27 best scores - actually Scott only scored in 22 rounds) but because Wallace (seen here at Museum Corner) had actually dropped a score (4 scores in fact) he was placed above Scott.

Tom New came into the weekend in 5th position but could have been overtaken by Dave Uren and / or Will Hall but a 10th and a 7th confirmed his 5th place (his highest finish since he first broke into the top ten in 2006) while Dave Uren took advantage of Will's car being unavailable since Shelsley to move above him into 6th place - an event that had seemed very likely considering Dave's late season upsurge in points - he scored 83 points in the second half of the season as against 38 in the first half! Dave is seen here on Sunday dealing with a touch of oversteer at Museum Corner:

While the injured Jos Goodyear entered the meeting in 8th place he only had a 2 point advantage over both John Bradburn and Alastair Crawford who were tied on 85, and, although Alastair failed to qualify for the second run-off, a 6th place in the first compared to John's 8th and 9th meant they remained tied on 90 points, now above Jos who therefore finished 10th.

Alastair had appeared in 26 rounds and John in 28, but John's dropped score was actually a 0! The next tie-breaker is actually the number of hill records and they were equal there as well as neither had recorded any and so it went to the third tie break which says the highest number of best places - both had scored 1 4th place but it was Alastair's two 5th places as against John's one 5th place that swung it his way! When you think about it, it was John's exclusion for excessive noise from the second run off at Prescott in April which ultimately cost him as the points scored in that run-off, and he had set a time good enough for 3rd place, would have been enough for him to have finished 8th in the final reckoning.

Here is John in action at Barbon in July

and Alastair at Harewood in May

And there was of course another National Championship settled on Sunday - the Avon Tyres / TTC Group MSA Leaders to give it its full name. Before the meeting the points situation had Colin Satchell on 81, Ed Hollier on 78 and Alex Summers on 75 (though the programme, and indeed the BHC website) had Alex on 79 which caused Colin some unnecessary worry!

If Colin (below) won his class then he would increase his total to 84 (or 85 with a record), but anything else would not improve his score beyond 81 (unless in the unlikely situation he was second in class with a record!). If Ed won his class he would also get to 81 while a record would give him the extra point and give him 82. If Alex won his class with a record he would only get to 79 so in reality he was not a factor. But of course if he really did have 79 points then a class win and a record would have given him 83 - so you can see why Colin thought he had something to worry about!!

 If Colin and Ed tied on 81 then Colin would win the Championships because he had dropped scores he could add on. Overall the odds were on Colin winning - Ed (below) had to get the record to have a chance to deprive him.

In practice Colin had got to within 5/100ths of Keith Murray's record - 55.46 against a record of 55.41 and so things were looking good for him. Ed had a very difficult record to aim at - Jos Goodyear's 44.75. Ed's best at the June meeting had been 47.75 and he improved that to 47.32 in practice, second quickest behind Eynon Price.

Come Sunday morning and the track was still a bit slippery after the overnight mist and Colin recorded 56.54 to lead the class by nearly a second from Steve Bailey's Escort. Steve's second run was an improvement to 55.95 - he was really pushing on

and then disaster for Colin as a drive shaft broke in the first part of the climb! So he would finish second on the day and add nothing to his score of 81. This was only his second breakdown of the year - the gearbox went at Wiscombe but with only 2 starters there that was not such a disaster as he would only have scored 4 points for winning.

So how was Ed doing? - well in the first run he had recorded a 48.16 to lie third behind Eynon Price and Richard Spedding and still a long way from the record. He improved to 47.48 second time up but he slipped to 4th as Sean Gould overtook him - so not enough and Colin Satchell was the Leaders Champion. But of course Colin still thought that Alex had a chance owing to the incorrect total in the points table and it was only when Scott Moran won the big single-seater class, beating Alex into second place that he felt able to relax....

Ironically the points situation was exactly the same as it was at the start of the meeting - Colin on 81, Ed on 78 and Alex on 75. I will review all the classes in my next blog post in a week or so.

Sorry - I said much earlier in my blogging year that I would not be doing a nuts and bolts analysis of each and every round, but it looks like I have just done one, with washers aplenty too!!  So here is a car to break up the words:

And no - it is not the Clerk of the Course - more about it later!

Colin became the first driver to win the Leaders with a roof over his head since Tony Lambert did it in a Ferrari in 1993 while he is the first to win it in a saloon, as opposed to a silhouette on a sports car chassis, since John Meredith in 1977! He attended every one of the 14 rounds and set 5 new hill records, on hills he had never seen before - Prescott (twice), Harewood (twice) and Barbon Manor. As he is based in Holsworthy in Devon it was a marathon year for him and he reckons he covered 10,000 miles in total. And he is going to do it all again next year!!

Apart from the BHC contenders who attended all the rounds (and in fact only 5 did that - Menzies (Mr and Mrs), New, Summers and Willis), only one other driver made 14 appearances and that was Allan McDonald who had almost as long a drive as Colin from his Dalbeattie base at the other end of the country.

And then to round off his year he had a marshall standing in his way doing his best Chinaman against the tank impersonation!

What was actually happening was that Allan had conked out on Cedar Straight and the marshall was guiding him backwards into safety which he found near here:

So why was it such a long day - the first cars were on the hill at 0830 and it was still a little damp from the fog as the early classes set out and Anthony Record was the first to find this out as he begins to spin his way around at Triangle:

If I was a runner in A1 or A2 I would actually find it a bit annoying that my class was always the one to be first on the track - often damp from morning dew or overnight rain - why are the classes not rotated from meeting to meeting so that sometimes it is classes C and D that go out first or even the smaller single - seaters?

At Loton everybody who completed 2 runs in Class A1 improved on their second run - by an average of 2.75 seconds while in A2 the 14 cars out of the 16 that improved their times did so by an average of 2.65 seconds, the majority these improvements being, I would wager, owing to the damp morning track - now I am not saying that the same would not be the case if other classes went first - it is just that this kind of 'pain' should be spread around more evenly.

One of the stars of A2 was John Harding in his E Type, seen below, who came 6th beating off a few Porsches and Japanese turbos!

Thee was also a bit of English / Welsh needle of course as this was the day after the night before when Wales shocked England in the Rugby World Cup. In the first run it was Welshman Nigel Burke (below) who led the way in his multi-hued Subaru, just 0.17 seconds up on Englishman Robert Lancaster-Gaye's Porsche.

In the second runs Robert (below) posted a 59.74 to take the lead and Nigel could only respond with a 59.86 - by such small margins are national slights settled!!

From 0930 to 1030 there was no activity because of the local church service and then once we started into the runs again we had a long delay after Lee Griffiths had gone off at Loggerheads / Fletchers Dellow and apparently "uncovered a fresh piece of rock" that had to be protected by a new tyre barrier - would be great if somebody could explain this a bit better - this what we got from the commentators who sounded as baffled as I still do! Shortly after that Tricia Davis went off at Hall and there were further red flags as the track was cleaned up after people had left the track! So all in all time quickly passed and lunch was eventually taken at just after 2!

There was a rumour that a single seater had been lost under this car and the delay was caused by trying to find it

but this was found to be just a scurrilous rumour and Nick Tart's little March 708 was found safe and well in another part of the paddock

I guess it was just one of those days when we have a bad morning and certainly the afternoon was a bit quicker although Carl Jones spread his gearbox and oil all over the track and Colin Satchell had to be recovered after breaking his drive shaft, but after Allan McDonald's problem, described above, the event ran through with no more failures until the top 12 run-off when amazingly three of the runners failed to finish.

Paul Haimes was the first to go when he spun approaching Triangle to conclude his BHC campaign after a difficult season with electrical problems - his best results actually came at the very first meeting of the year at Prescott (where the car is seen below) with a class win and a 5th place in the second run-off but a whole run of problems meant that he scored no points after Barbon in early July and eventually finished 16th overall.

Then in quick succession Will Hall and Eynon Price hit problems in the lower reaches of the hill so that only 9 runners scored points for the only time this year.

But back to the car they were all talking about - and not necessarily for this reason!

The Multi-Car Challenge for 2015 came to an end with the biggest of their challenges - how to get a tow-car, sorry Touareg, up the narrow confines of Loton Park!

In the end it only took Alisdair Suttie 68.06 seconds to do it as for only the second time this year he beat his more experienced teammate, David Finlay, who achieved the ascent in 68.68 seconds. Alisdair's other victory over David came in their smallest car of the year, the little Abarth at Harewood in May, Alisdair seen here taking the last corner 'flat' in the Italian roller-skate.

 The good news for us spectators is that they will be doing the same thing again next year as they have manufacturers queueing up to offer them cars!

So for the last time - favourite cars of the meeting - there were a number cars I had not seen before during the year and so the top 3 are:

Mike Reece's Subaru Impreza

 Thomas Taylor's Mini (well that was predictable)

and Dave Watkins' eye-dazzling Triumph TR8 - I don't think many left the factory looking like this!

Then to round off the day we had Wallace Menzies' phantom record - at least for those watching the timing display at Triangle. With two cars to run Alex led the way on a 44.32 and then Wallace's time came up on the display as 43.47 - a new outright record but then we heard the commentators say 44.47 - cue derision from the crowd about blind commentators.

Scott then went up and did a 43.66 and so in the crowd's eyes Wallace had won but a telephone call to the commentary box brought the explanation that it was the timing computer that showed 44.47 for Wallace and not the sun shining in the commentators' eyes that had led them to them giving out that time.

About 5 minutes later it was confirmed that it was indeed 44.47  - the explanation for that is found on the thread on Uphill Racers which I started to seek the answer. So nothing devious - just sodding technology again!!

So the end of a long year for lots of people - I have thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope that my postings have been entertaining and informative - I hope so because I am not finished yet!

Shortly I will do my review of the year and the Hillclimb Tour awards will be announced along with an appraisal of all the classes that feature in the Leaders Championship - and for those of a more statistical bent look out for future analyses of drivers' records and performances, not just this year but in the past! Also if you read Speedscene there will be no hiding from me as I hope to do an article for that esteemed publication too!

And remember you can see lots of my photos on Flickr.

It's Summers time at Doune

Yes the sun was shining at Doune (at least on Saturday - but it stayed dry on Sunday too) and we had a scorching hillclimb to go with it. Not only a new champion in Alex Summers but a total of 5 new class records at the end of the day, though in one of those cases there were 8 runs all below the old mark which had stood for 12/13 years.

We might as well start with that one which happened in our favourite class of the year - up to 1100 racing cars. The record had stood to Adam Fleetwood (September 2002) and Mark Budgett (June 2003) at 40.78. In the first class runs Simon Fidoe lowered it to 40.33 and Steve Marr also got beneath it with 40.44. In the first run-off they then showed that more was possible with Steve doing a 39.91 and Simon a 40.21 - but of course not counting as class records. Come the second class runs they made it stick with Simon setting the mark at 39.97 before Steve blew it apart with a 39.43! And then in the second run-off it was Simon on 40.16 and Steve on 39.56 just to prove that the class runs were not a fluke!

Here is Steve pictured at the June meeting at Doune in the PCD Saxon

and Simon at Harewood in June in the Empire Wraith showing the different aerodynamic approaches between the 2 cars.

Another Scotsman setting the heather alight was Les Mutch, newly crowned as Scottish Hillclimb Champion. A troubled run of 40.36 in the first of the class runs was not going to challenge Lee Adams' 37.62 set in the same car but come the afternoon and there was no mistake with a 37.59 to take the record by a narrow margin. This qualified Les in 4th place for the second run-off and he recorded 37.85 in that for a 7th place finish.

Here he is doing a bit of hand-jiving to loosen those muscles before a run!

Another single-seater-equipped Scotsman setting a record was Malcolm Wishart in his Lotus 41C in the classic racing car class (pre -71) where he recorded a 49.43 to break Rob Bremner's record of 50.96 and was also below it on his second run (50.46).  Here is the car in all its glory at Barbon Manor back in July

and Malcolm always displays its history when it is parked in the paddock (I hope this is readable).

The other two records were set in the Road - going Series Production classes. In the up to 2 litre class Jim King's time of 50.94 in his Renault Clio 172 removed Sandy Coghill's 51.07 from the record book,

while in the over 2 litre class Chris Randell's sinister black Mitsubishi Evo8 took 49.26 seconds to dip below Archie Bain's record of 50.04, both of the old records having been set in June 2010.

All 5 of the new record holders are Scottish (which may not be surprising) but also, apart from Malcolm Wishart, the rest all come from the North East with Steve and Les from Aberdeen and Jim and Chris from Inverurie - which is a small town about 15 miles North West of the Granite City - maybe there is something in the water in the area which is also the home of Graeme Wight and Craig and Alan Nicol (Craig holds the record for road-going specialist production cars).

Another hillclimber from the area is Stuart Sugden who drives a GWR Mini. Stuart is a plumber by trade (

he fitted some central heating for my sister) and he must be used to crawling into small spaces to investigate a leak - but here he is getting some practice while father Jim assesses his efforts.

Before we finish on records - in the up to 2 litre single seater class the record stands to Alex Summers at 38.04 from June 2013. The class was won by Dave Uren this week with times of 38.32 and 38.19. Excellent but not record-breaking. Dave's run-off times, however were 37.22(!) and 37.69. Stunning times which will not be recognised except by anoraks like myself (and maybe Jerry and Eddie) but they must not be forgotten. There must be quite a few 'unofficial' records like that which are not recorded in programmes because they were not set in class runs - surely this is a bit unfair?? One hopes they are recorded in club records but somehow I don't think they necessarily will be.

So Alex Summers became the new British champion and he did it in true champion style winning both run-offs. Wallace Menzies set the target in the first one at 35.90 and he was followed by Trevor Willis who had to win to keep alive his hopes, at least for another few minutes. However, gearbox issues which helped him to have all 4 wheels off at the top of East Brae restricted him to 38.96 and so we had a new champion even before Alex took his run but there was no letting up and 35.65 seconds later he had won the run-off and confirmed the title. He would have been excused for taking it easy in the afternoon and his qualifying run was relatively slow at 36.63, but he was still fastest qualifier! Wallace then set a new FTD with 35.54 in the run-off but just minute later that had been surpassed as Alex rounded off the day with 34.82, just 6/100 ths slower than Scott Moran's outright hill record!

This was also the 17th BHC title for Gould cars, equalling the record of Pilbeam, but the dominance of Gould has been greater - only once has that sequence been interrupted, when Trevor Willis won in 2012 while Pilbeam's run was broken 4 times, once of course by Chris Cramer in the original Gould 84 which was present at Doune with both Chris and David Gould driving to celebrate 30 years since that title victory.

There were lots of people interested in the car including this certain constructor whose cars have of course been one of the main challengers to Gould in recent years:

I wonder if he picked up any tips!!

Meanwhile, Gould's dominance has Tim Wilson worried and he is seen here asking Alisdair Suttie if he could organise a Multi-Car Challenge for next year's BHC! Can you imagine 12 Audi S8s!!

It was a Honda Civic Type-R for their penultimate round and it was a superb car which took them to personal bests (I believe) at Doune by the end of the weekend. Next week at Loton should be interesting - has there ever been a bigger car than a VW Toureg to climb Loton (or any hillclimb!)? The Civic passed me on the Monday as I was driving slowly but steadily down the M6 - I just had time to clock the number plate to check it was the very car before it became a little red dot - and no it was not David or Alisdair driving - but what a job for a delivery driver!!

One of the many good things about hillclimbing is the ability for families to share cars and there are many husband and wife combinations on the hills, but also fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons and even three generations all still competing. Are there any mothers and daughters I might have missed I wonder - probably! Having never competed directly against my wife or my sons I often wonder what relationships become like when one of the drivers has a slight coming together with the scenery or suddenly shows a turn of speed and beats the previously dominant partner!!

People watching in the paddock can be fascinating and here are Scott Sheridan and Richard Summers waiting patiently for their wives to return their cars

but it was all OK - and here is Lindsay helping Richard on his way to the start

but it looks as if Lesley wants another shot and Scott reckons the best way to stop her is to sit on her wheel!!

Wheel-sitting is catching and here we catch Steve Owen having a contemplative moment (or is he in the huff) on the wheel of John MacKenzie's OMS 2000M as he waits to attack the hill in the second run-off

Steve was driving the Honda powered OMS number 3 at the weekend - and it is interesting to compare this car, seen below, with the latest OMS product - the BMW powered OMS 28 seen at Loton earlier in the year.

A number of people have said how much they like to see the older photographs in the blog and so here are a few from Doune 21 years ago in September 1994. These are all scanned from prints and so excuse the poorer quality.

And we start with that man Steve Owen who was driving this OMS SC1 - I think I liked the paint job!

And to revert to the present for a moment, Richard Matossian had his version (or is it the same car?) at Doune last weekend

Back to 1994 and my last OMS picture (honestly) for this blog is Mark Lawrence in what is described simply as an OMS 1100.

One of Mark's competitors in the class was David Smith in what is described as Sidewinder 2 - anybody got information on that car?

In my last blog I rated David Seaton's Pilbeam MP43 as one of my favourite cars and here is another one of the 4 chassis that were produced - this is Jim Robinson's car, co-driven here by Rob Fradley - this car then went to Charlie Smith in the Channel Islands.

And finally from 1994 - where it all began for the Moran family in the BHC - this is Roger's MP62 - chassis 4, at that time with 1.6 Vauxhall power, which still competes in the hands of Andrew Henson and Nicola Dearden with some modifications to MP82 spec.

I hope those photos maybe brought back some happy memories.

And so to my favourite cars from the weekend - if you were not there on Saturday you will have missed Lewis Duncan's Hillman Imp as it broke on its second practice run, but here it is trying to look like an Alan Fraser Imp from the 1960s

Secondly - another, even older car - it may have been the slowest car of the day but Roger Williams' Austin 7 Speedex looked like great fun

and my third choice is this very smart Mazda MX5 of Danny and James Clark - I am not really a fan of the MX5 but this one looked particularly smart.

And finally what does a newly crowned champion do to celebrate - well he has a chat with Mum and Dad of course - though it looks like Richard may be a bit emotional - or maybe he just has something in his eye!!

Well done again Alex and looking forward to the final event of the season at Loton Park - I don't know how these guys do all the travelling with their cars / trailers / motorhomes etc - I only have myself to think about and I am pretty tired!!!