Forrestburn Hillclimb

I'm just back from a round of the Lowland Speed Championship at Forrestburn. I set out with the aim of beating my previous personal best of 57.66sec, set last August in the MX-5. Based on times at Kames, I was aiming for a target of 54.36secs. I had no expectation of getting a trophy with a strong entry in class A8 of Alistair Matheson in the TVR Griffith, Gus Carnegie in the Ginetta G4, Ian Duncan in a Mazda RX-7 and Jamie McDonald in his Lotus Elise. Gus, Ian and Jamie had competed on Saturday with Ian putting in a storming 54.05sec to win the class. I felt sure I would be bringing up the rear today.

Practice went ok and I was hoping for lots of rain after a wet second run which saw me go fastest by quite a margin with 60.84sec. However, it cleared up nicely for the first timed run and right enough, I was at the back with 55.14 - albeit having smashed my previous personal best.

My car was severely clunking on the start and coming out of the hairpin which led me to think that it was transmission related so we jacked the car up and discovered an alarming amount of free play in the transmission. So it looks like it might be a gearbox/diff problem. More investigation required.

Anyway, final timed run came and I pressed on a bit more - still nice and smooth with no real drama though. I was delighted to cross the line in 53.78sec - good enough for second in class behind Alistair on 53.20sec.


There were some other interesting cars there including 7 Aston Martins.





So, yet another trophy for the mantlepiece, a smash of my personal best and some valuable Lowland Speed Championship points. But the best aspect about today was how close the competition was - it was really refreshing to be in a class where four of us were within less than a second of each other and we were all within a couple of seconds of first. That's what this is all about for me.