Hillclimb,  Quine Road,  October 2003

TCS Racing is sponsored by :

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

This was sadly not a great day for our team.  Problems with the car and driver error turned what could have been a fantastic event into somewhat of a disheartening experience.  Despite these problems affecting our performance,  we are still pleased to say everyone had a great time and no one was injured.

Troy was to compete at the first round of the Interclub Hillclimb Series (2003) held by the Thames Valley Car Club at Quine Rd,  with Timothy coming along for a ride as a passenger.  SO863 was used as the competition vehicle,  having only just been repaired the Thursday before the event.

Our team had a 5:30am start to get over to Jeff's place,  Jeff towing our car down while Troy drove Jeff's CRX down for him.  We arrived in Ta Huna for documentation and scrutineering about 8:30am,  with the weather having been absolutley diabolical all the way down and continuing to be so right up until the first run.  It was also very cold.

Troy had great difficulty maneuvering the MR2 around in the pits & the reccy run as he was having problems with the gear stick or linkages,  which prevented selection of first or second gear.  This mean take offs in third and a lot of stalling,  we eventually work out that Tim could push hard on one of the linkages which would then allow the stick to move over far enough to select the first two gears.  This hampered our team all day.  On his first run Troy was slightly faster than Jeff,  with a time of not quite 61 seconds,  however this is an unfair comparison as Jeff had a wet road but it had dried out by the time Troy started.  In fact the weather was quite good for the rest of the event,  despite the horrific forecasts.

On his second run Troy used only about 4000 revs instead of 7000 to start and an effort to reduce wheel spin.  Unfortunately the car was running extremely rich and built up a lot of crap while waiting to start.  This caused the engine to miss very badly all the way through first and second gears reducing the power by an estimated third.  This hadn't been a problem on the first run as the extra revs had blown most of the rubbish out through the exhaust.  This meant the second run was approximately four seconds slower.

With only one more official run left to go Troy was determined to improve on his initial time,  but this unfortunately proved his undoing.  His first take off had a great deal of wheel spin,  the car moved sideways and failed to start the timing system so he was recalled to the start line.  His second take off was alot better and he entered the first major left hander at speed of 100kph (accoridng to Timothy) in second gear.  On the entry to the corner the vehicle started to twitch at the rear,  Troy tried to correct by releasing the wheel and allow the car to straighten up but he released the wheel far too quickly.  This caused the car to jerk back into line too suddenly and it started to spin the other way.  Troy continued trying to regain control,  but ran out of road first,  taking out the temporary safety fencing errected by the council to warn of a washout.  Luckily the damage in relatively minor,  the front bumper will need replacing,  the right front side guard will need panel beating as will the drivers door.  The team was able to complete the third run,  albeit with a poor finishing time.

After that there was nothing left to do but put the car on the trailer and begin the long drive home.  We hope to start repairs on the car as soon as possible.  Photos of the damage will be posted here as soon as they become available.

06/10/2003 - An examination of the car has revealed there is no vertical travel at all on the front suspension,  it seems this would also have been a problem at the event two days before.  This would have made the vehicle extremely difficult to drive,  although we don't think it will be terribly difficult to repair.

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

TCS Racing is sponsored by :