Hillclimb,  Murrays Road,  November 2003

TCS Racing is sponsored by :
ALTO

Results for this event can be seen at the HCMC website.

An early start saw Troy heading off on his own in the Subaru Leone.  The MR2 is still being repaired after the incidents at Quine Road,  and the other unrelated issues found since.

The event was extemely well organised,  an each run took only a minimum of time to get through all the competitors.  This was despite the awful weather,  which was overcast to start and became very,  and consistently,  wet.

Murray's Road was not taking the weather all that well,  the road had a lot of clay on it and very bad corrugations at the bottom of the hill near the start.  The condition of the road,  the bad weather and the fact that Troy had no tow vehicle or trailer if anything went wrong were all factors in his decision to quit while he was ahead - after his second run.

On his first run Troy achieved a time of around 1.49,  simply by driving as fast as he could up the hill without any real plan.  There were three exciting moments on this run,  twice on corners where Troy entered too hot and just about lost the back end.  The third occured on the final corner before the finish,  a hairpin right hand turn with a nasty drop on the outside.  On both runs at this corner the car understeered very badly and the only way Troy was able to get round safely was to crawl slowly through the corner before changing down to first and powering up the slight rise to the finish.

The second run saw Troy driving a lot more technically,  with slower entry into corners but more control through them and better exit speed.  Unfortunately this run was two seconds slower than his first,  despite having driven well to extend the distance of the straight and got better speed for a longer period of time.  The hairpin was a still a problem on this run,  and there was one other moement of panic mid way through the course when Troy applied the power a bit early in a corner and had to recover the now sliding vehicle.  Although no danger was involved Troy lost time on the first corner of the second run,  holding the car in first gear instead of changing to second.  This was part of his attempt to enter corners more slowly and drive with more control rather than speed,  but this particular decision was overly cautious and cost him precious time.

Both driver and vehicle returned from the event in the same condition they left,  which is very pleasing given the conditions.

Results for this event can be seen at the HCMC website.

TCS Racing is sponsored by :