Australian Hillclimb Championship was held in Gippsland this past weekend at easily the best hillclimb facility in the country.
After working on the car for a while in prep for the event, Friday practice saw a new PB set after only 2 runs at 60.54 to qualify 3rd of 7 in the class.
Saturday started with it moving to 2nd in the morning and another new PB at 60.27. Some rear suspension tweaks made it alot better in the afternoon, but didn't get a really good lap in to improve the times and finished 3rd at the end of day 1.
Sunday brought a quick retune and it drop the PB again, now at 60.13 and still in 3rd with the aim now at the holy grail of a sub 1 minute lap. Bit of a rethink on 2 corners and it went 59.91 but went back to forth by only 0.4 second. Last run was "all or nothing" and was under the mid run split time needed to go back to 3rd but it all came unstuck just before the finish and I spun off the track.... No harm done at all, other than just missing the time needed to get onto the podium. The experienced guys said that lap would have been in the 59.2 - 3 region, so it did well.
By the end, we ended up 4th out of 7 in the national title, only 0.4 off 3rd place, with the oldest car in the class, beaten by a yoing gun in Honda Civic with a 2.0 VTEC and 6 speed that revs to 10,000rpm, the 2017 Aust Champ in a Datsun 1200 with a mid mounted Honda S2000 engine and sequential gearbox and the 2016 Aust Champ in a Ford Escort with a 2.0 Focus Zetec and close ratio 5 speed.... While I'm using a G200 single cam Gemini engine (that even tho I've sort of rebuilt it lately it's coming out and really being done properly because I'm not happy with it) with Webers and a standard Gemini 4 speed, so I'm pretty happy with that.
Roll on 2019 and defending the state title and crack at the national title in NSW as well.
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