FIRST POSTED September 2013
The first weekend of September took me to Prescott Hillclimb for the third British Hillclimb event on the trot. Thankfully the early autumn chills were absent and a fine event ensued combining the best of top class hillclimbing (with run off wins for both the title protagonists) some good company and an artist in search of a muse….
It didn’t start any too promising when my injured finger (victim of a wayward sledge hammer and a reluctant tent peg at Shelsley two weeks ago) sprung a bit of a “leak” as the marquee was being put up on Friday evening. I won’t go into the gory details but lets face it if you are going to need first aid then a motor racing event isn’t a bad place to be; it’s wall to wall with more trained medical-type people and equipment than the average hospital! ‘Marky’ Mark from the Midlands Rescue unit kindly sorted out the ‘claret’ , bandaged the offending digit , and even provided me with a can of something suitably soothing to drink at the same time…Stella is ideal for this purpose, I can assure you. He also helped pack away the stall at the end of Sunday. Cheers Mark! You’re a gent.
Friday and Saturday evenings were spent socializing (or was that just boozing?) in the marshall’s compound and “The Finger” got quite lot of attention and comment . Some of these comments are even repeatable – many are not, it seems race marshalls (and ‘Pilbeam Mick’) have a robust style of humor, bless ’em. The general consensus is that I cannot be trusted with anything as technical as hammers in future. A round of “Rocket Fuel” ensured a good night’s sleep and a predisposition to remain seated (as you see above) in a relaxed manner on the stall for most of Sunday! Well, that’s my excuse anyway.
Just along the way from the trade stands was a display of Formula Student cars (above) from various universities. Generally you can look at them and say the students involved are doing engineering rather than car styling… the tight rules clearly don’t leave much room for an artistic eye.
Talking of which a long running feature of the event was wandering artistic eye of Doug Wheeler, normally reserved for Bugattis, Vintage specials and devices with at least 4 wheels which form the subject matter for his paintings and on the spot sketches. Doug’s artistic eye seemed to find new directions as considered the weekend to feature best turn out of attractive young ladies he’s seen at any Prescott event.
Talk of suitable cars as subject matter changed to talk of a career-diversion into ‘life studies’ and the apparent abundance of potential muses at Prescott. He seemed to spot several candidates suitable for the role including the elegant lady (left) he’s casually admiring here as she peruses the greetings card on his stall…
The action on the hill was a bit fragmented on Saturday by numerous incidents, the worst of which being a nasty spill for a sidecar crew in the esses which thankfully appears to have been less damaging to the unfortunate rider and his passenger than it proved to the machine, although medical assistance was needed., and efficiently employed. Prescott is never short of the right people in an emergency and we are all most thankful for that. Missing from the team on this occasion was regular Rescue Marshall Tim Hull who was taken poorly earlier in the week and everyone was most relieved to hear he’s recovering – Get well soon Tim!
The ongoing battle for the hillclimb title is between triple former champion Scott Moran (above) in the Gould-NME V8 and reigning champion Trevor Willis (below) in the new OMS 28 V8. Honours ended up event with a win and a third for each of them and the title goes on to the next round at Doune in Scotland with Scott currently holding a reasonable but far from secure lead.
Other top runners included the Gould’s of John Bradburn (above middle) and Tom New (above) the Force Nissan of Will Hall (Below upper) and recent form-man Wallace Menzies (below lower) who was rather uncharacteristically unable to mix it with the top two runners on this occasion after several recent round wins with the pokey Cosworth XD Indy car- engined DJ Firehawk.
For a national championship event it wasn’t that busy but sales were OK, if not up to last year (they haven’t been since the Euro Crisis in the spring) and it was very social. I seemed to spend most of the time in conversation with someone interesting including OMS race car builder Steve Owen and wife Lynn who were good company on Saturday evening. I wasn’t aware before but you don’t paint race cars purple in some part of the USA…but that’s another story! Appropriately with the film RUSH about to premiere in cinemas, there was also a former Hesketh ‘tyre man’ who used to work on James Hunt’s Grand Prix cars cars back in the day. Modern F1 must seem so dull to anyone with “Hesketh” on their CV!
Next stop Beaulieu Autojumble. Not with a stall, just as a ‘punter’ this year.
