harray RD GRAVEL HILLCLIMB - 

Round 1 of hillclimb challenge

Well we haven't been at Harray Rd for a long while, and it was good to go back there for Round 1 of our Hillclimb Challenge.  And wow did it prove popular with the competitors.  38 cars turned up for the event, with people from as far away as Gisborne and Taupo coming up to do the event.  With all those competitors it was good that we had all those helpers!  And wow did we have some great helpers.  And as it's Volunteers Week, its appropriate that we show you the great group we had.  Not everyone managed to get into the photo but this is the majority of them.  What a great crew 

And a great days racing was had, after a bit of a slow start.  The large number of competitors meant there had to be three groups and early on in the day there were a lot of spectators coming in as well.  Logistically this is slow to organise, but once the practice was out of the way, the timed runs when very smoothly.  Only one incident and comisserations to Mason Skinner who had David Holder sitting alongside.  They had a bit of a roll over on the first corner and did a bit of damage.  But credit to Mason, they patched it up and managed to complete the day.  David Holder was a busy man during the day, swapping from car to car, imparting some of his knowledge to new drivers.  Good on you Dave.

And there were great battles througout the field all through the day.  Class A was a battle between the Toyota Corollas  with Daniel Haines coming out the winner from James West and Nick Oldham.  James unfortunately developed a manifold leak and didn't run the last run.  There was three seconds covering the top three.  JP Van Der Meys battled it out with Jordan Grant for fourth.

In Class B the Honda Civic of Moran Tunnincliffe won the day from the two Escorts of Sean Treanor and Evan Mooney.  It was a case of MBOP's Sean sandwiched between Taupo Classic Rally's Morgan, and Gisborne CC's Evan.  

There were only two entries in Class C, with Alistair Coatsworth getting his 2WD Impreza Wagon out of storage and having a go.  Despite having tuning issues Alistair pipped Travis McCormack in his 2.3 Escort by just .6 sec.  What a good battle.

In the E1 Class (pre 2000 4WD) there was a huge number of cars - 20. And there were some battles here!  David Loughlin in his H6 Subaru set a sharp time in practice and that had Mitch James and Ben Quin's attention.  And so the battle began.  Times started coming down in 2 second increments and going into the last run David held the leave from Mitch by 2 sec and Ben by 3 sec.  And so the third and final run.  Mitch was determined, David was out for a 1.04 run, and Ben was chasing both of them.  Wow, talk about down to the wire!  David ran first and didn't get the 1.04, coming home only tenths faster than his Run 2 time.  Ben shaved another 2 sec off his Run 2 time but it wasn't enough.  Mitch put in the demon run and came out 0.25 sec faster than David to take the win.  Epic!

In the E2 class, David Hearn improved each run, to beat home a fast finishing Phil Macquarie driving his new Impreza for the first time.  Neale Morris drove his EVO 7 into third place.

So thank you to all the competitors and the helpers.  It was a great event and the weather was kind to us.   Results have been posted on the Results Page.

NEXT EVENT - Sun 24 june

autocross at the blokart track

Our second attempt at a second event at this great venue.  Keep your fingers crossed for the weather to behave.

Please note, this event has replaced the Baypark Motorkhana/Autocross originally planned for 10 June.  Unfortunately there was a mix up of dates and we didn't get the date confirmed by Baypark. Apologies for this.

MOTORSPORT ONLINE ENTRIES 

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