The RCCV contingent doing battle in Round 3 of the Rob Roy Hillclimb Interclub Challenge was well down on our usual numbers with several regulars overseas or suffering injuries sufficient to put them out of contention.

Our reduced numbers reflected the overall attendance with around 65 entries making the spritely procession up the hill and down some 314 times. Yes, that is indeed six runs each for the day, with the usual slew of vehicles that didn’t make it all the all the way through the day.

The day started well when the officials announced we’d be doing the ‘short course’ for a change instead of the long one with the recently introduced and universally unpopular chicane. The track configuration sans-chicane was nice for a change and kept things moving well. There was little need for the recovery vehicle and while the recovery crew did get to go up the track a couple of times they didn’t need to bring any vehicles back. That contributed to the excellent running of the day.

Our four attendees did well; batted above our average with a first in class, a second in class and a third in class. Everyone started with a pleasing time then kept chipping a half-second and occasional whole second off their time. All four of us gained several PBs over the day with that last sixth run giving three of us our best time not only for the day but for ever at this track.

Michelle moved up from fifth to fourth place to have a several run tussle with the third-placed competitor. She took third place with a couple of runs to go and held her ground from then on. She was hoping for a 27-something but squeezed out a 26.93 on the last run to well beat her aspirations.

Leon steadily chipped away at the leader in the class but couldn’t quite get the last 0.17 seconds he needed to take him. He missed his hope of a 25 something time by 0.02 – so close!

David’s diesel Megane behaved itself and didn’t want to stop mid-run to burn off its particle filter. He kept on returning to the pits with a big grin as he knocked 1/3 second of successive runs apart from the one where he took a whole second off.

I myself was pretty stoked with my first run in the cool and damp of the morning, getting close to my PB. It’s usual for my first run of the day to be my best but that wasn’t the pattern for this day. After several runs of getting most of the various aspects right on the mark I finally managed one where I got them all right to get below 44 seconds.

Didn’t think I could do better and thought I’d gotten everything the car – and the driver – had to give. I felt I had a solid benchmark of the engine; a baseline for the forthcoming rebuild. Two runs later, another half second off for a low 44.34! Obviously got it even righter that time!

There were a few cars getting 21s, 22s and 23s – class E, of course – but the time of the day was a shockingly fast 19.57. And that after a couple of scorching 20.2x runs. Blink and you missed it. To put that in context, the course record is 17.30 seconds set in February 2009.

Rob Roy moves with the times and there were a couple of EVs there for ‘demonstration’ runs. One was a big Audi that just looked like it was a fast car but also looked heavy; the other an MG SUV style thing. The debate before they ran was whether the presumed power advantage of the Audi would offset its, also presumed, greater difficulty getting its mass around the chicane.

They were doing the long course (with chicane) and were doing 30-36 second runs initially. Which is not particularly spectacular for that course, about average, but they might have been novices to the track. Later the Audi got into the 29 second bracket and the MG was about our group’s best times for the short course. Of note however was that their final speeds were heading towards the 150kph mark even so. That big Audi clearly had little difficulty dancing around the chicane, whatever its mass was.

While it was a strong per-capita showing, our numbers weren’t sufficient for the club to have a serious chance of challenging the Interclub leaders. Ah well, there’s always next year.