Focus… focus… focus. Still seems strange that the first part of the Gurston Down hill climb course is downhill, but now’s not the time to think about that, just concentrate on the narrow strip of tarmac ahead. Lights switch from red to green, but no need to go just yet, remember that in hill climbing the clock starts when you do. Get the revs up to about 4000, drop the clutch, feel the rear end of the Caterham twitch a little as the tyres scrabble for grip… The run, and the fun, has just begun…
Someone once memorably described speed hill climbing as ‘Formula 1 up the garden path’. And at the highest level that’s just about got it in a nutshell: 600bhp-plus hi-tech carbon-tubbed single seaters generating big fat dollops of downforce, racing against the clock up short, sharp narrow country lanes – and reaching speeds of 150mph in the process. Now take a breath here, and just ponder on that last statement; that’s 150mph up a 12-feet wide single-track country lane…
But it’s not all about top notch high-spec race cars, as there’s a class in hill climbing and sprinting – the closely related discipline that usually takes place at race tracks or airfields, but differs in that it doesn’t require a hill – for just about any car you wish to mention, including, with some clubs at least, classes for bog-standard road cars.
Sounds like a great way to get hassle free and relatively cheap motorsport then. But best of all there’s even a couple of schools where you can take your own car to learn the art of driving up a twisting, extraordinarily narrow ribbon of asphalt as rapidly as possible. These schools are a great way to get a feel for this very addictive sport, while also giving you the opportunity to have a good old fashioned blat up a country lane without the worry of meeting a Massey Ferguson coming the other way.
There’s one such school at Gurston Down in Wiltshire. It’s been in existence for about eight years now and it runs three courses a year for up to 30 pupils at a time, all for the reasonable forkage of just £150, which includes a hearty lunch and big wedges of cake at the end of the day – civilised see, this hill climbing lark.
The Gurston Down Hill Climb School is situated at the hill climb venue of the same name, a challenging little track that twists its way up some 967 metres of presentation-fudge-box effect Wiltshire arable. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a more charming venue for motorsport; the only problem with it is that some of that scenery can be very solid indeed. Luckily, there are people on hand to keep you on the straight and (very) narrow.
…First corner’s called Hollow, but not ‘Sleepy Hollow’, this one. You need to be wide awake here. A lift of the throttle and a very fast left, threading the eye of the needle and trying not to think about the steep, solid bank that’s ready to collect you if you get it wrong. Let the car drift over to the right on the exit now…
The day starts with an introduction to the instructors and a short lecture on what hill climbing’s all about, how to get involved in the sport, the equipment you’ll need and so on. Simon Durling is the school’s chief instructor and also one of the country’s top hill climb drivers. He’s been in the sport for 20 years and currently competes in a 550bhp Gould single seater which bears the number four, which means he’s the fourth best hill climber in the UK, so he has a fair idea of what this sport is all about.
“It’s a very pure form of motorsport,” says Durling. “Because it’s just you against the clock, and then there’s the challenge of driving up narrow roads with trees and hedges close by.”
All of which became apparent when we were separated into three groups in order to walk the course; the expression ‘run off’ doesn’t seem to be in the hill climber’s lexicon. And it’s not just the flora you need to watch, either; the fauna can create a few problems, too. “If a pheasant does happen to get in your way, my advice is hit it. It’s safer than hitting the barrier,” Durling told us.
This walk is not a nature ramble, though. In fact it’s a very important part of a day on the hill. It’s all about building up a picture in your mind of what you might expect, every small piece of information – in terms of the state of the surface, possible points of reference for braking etc. – is important and many hill climb drivers will even be seen crouching down low to give themselves a cockpit-eye’s view of a corner as they walk the course. You also need to look out for damp patches if it’s been wet, where the kerbs are high and who knows, maybe even cow vomit – after all, everybody knows the hills are alive with the sound of moo-sick… sorry, couldn’t resist.
…Karousel’s next, a pair of sharp right turns, and a test of the car’s brakes; it’s frantic, everything’s happening very quickly. Taking in lots more speed into the first part than you would have believed was possible at the start of the day, trying not to think about the little line of hay bales that’s all that stands between you and the trees. The steep slope helps with the retardation for the second right-hander, a quick change down, and through as smoothly as possible, taking just a little bit of kerb on the way…
You can take just about any car to the Gurston school, just as long as it’s road legal, as school principal Andrew Hext explained: “We insist on this on a school day, because of the level of safety cover available. But we do get some very quick cars turning up, with quite a few Ferraris and Porsches coming along in the past.”
On the day PT attended there was quite an eclectic little gathering, including a snarling Mazda RX-7, a smattering of oldish MGs, a Lotus Elan, a Renault 5 Turbo 2, a Lotus Elise, a Fiesta XR2, a Lister Jaguar XJS – that was just about as wide as the track – and an Audi S3. But PT’s own weapon of choice was Caterham’s new Roadsport, a light and narrow car with a torquey powerplant (see page 24); just the thing for this line of work.
Each driver gets eight runs up the hill during the day, which is four more than you’d get at most hill climb events – where it’s usually two practice runs and two competitive runs – so it’s good value. Some regular competitors use the school for extra practice.
Actually, the time you get on track at a hill climb is very short when you compare it to track days or racing, after all four 40 second runs at Gurston means only two minutes and 40 seconds of track time. But that’s the point, in a way. Hill climbing is all about distilling the experience, you can pack a lot of thrills into that couple of minutes – and it also takes far less out of your car, incidentally.
So, if you want to do well, you need to concentrate very hard indeed in order to maximise your time on the hill. One slip and your run is just about ruined in terms of the time. And as Durling says: “That’s very character forming.” Also, you have to bear in mind that each run will start on cold tyres and with cold brakes too, which is just a little something extra to think about as you barrel into the first corner.
At the school they don’t time the runs, instead they place instructors at different parts of the hill, people like Durling himself, Simon McBeath – a well-known motorsport writer as well as a rapid hill climber – and Jim Robinson, all of whom know the hill intimately.
…Ashes. The final left hander, a tricky one this, a dab of the brakes, must remember to turn in later than last time – yes, about there – aiming for the end of the kerbing, squeeze on the power, the back of the Caterham’s stepping out too much again. It’s great fun, but it would cost precious tenths in an event, as some of the car’s all-important momentum on to the long drag to the finish is squandered…
Each instructor is responsible for a particular portion of the track, and after a pair of runs – you wait in the holding area at the top of the course after a run, then come back down the hill in a long line – they will talk you through your attempts, tell you where you’re going wrong, and give you tips on how to improve your lines. There are cones to mark braking and turn-in points in the morning, but later these are taken away once you’re familiar with the track. It’s all done in a friendly way, but the great thing is the individual attention you’re given. You don’t get that at many of the racing driver schools.
You also start to think about your runs a lot more as the day progresses and it becomes apparent that this, the mental preparation if you like, is as important in hill climbing as the car preparation and the driving, and I can guarantee that you’ll be thinking about the foibles of that little snake of tarmac a long time after you’ve finished your day at the school.
…The last stretch, quick and sure gear changes now – a field stretching out to the left, just Armco between you and the trees a metre or so to the right – the finish line is on a blind left/right kink, flat out, near 90 in the Caterham; heady stuff, a twitch of the wrists on the tiny wheel and it’s through. Must remember not to lift suddenly, that could cause a sudden weight transfer and a spin into the field, or worse… The fastest cars will go through that last kink at close to 150mph during an event. Respect.
Mountain Excitement
So what makes a good hill climb driver? “I think you’ve got to be fairly unflappable,” says Simon Durling. “If you happen to see the time of the chap in front and you’ve got to beat it, then there’s no use getting in a state – you have got to be very cool, calm and collected.”
Out on the course, Durling says, like with other forms of racing, it’s all about keeping things as smooth as possible: “All the while you’re going sideways, you’re not going forwards,” he says. But you also need to be aggressive, too, driving at ten-tenths from the word go: “You don’t get a lap or two to play yourself in. You have to be absolutely on it from the time the green light goes on.”
And even before that green light goes on you need to be thinking your way up the course, just as a Formula 1 driver and other pro racers will visualise a lap, a hill climb driver will visualise a run – arguably it’s even more important in hill climbing, where hundredths of a second can mean the difference between winning or losing.
“At the start line the top boys sit there with their eyes shut,” says Andrew Hext. “As the marshals are positioning their car precisely on the start line they sit there and you’ll see their hand movements in the car as they’re mentally driving the hill even before they begin their run.”
Once on the run, Durling says, he almost always brakes in a straight line, and recommends that if you can heel and toe – the process where you blip the throttle with the side of the foot as the gear lever passes through neutral on the downchange – then it’s a great help, keeping the car settled, the gear changes smooth, and also preventing driven wheel lock ups.
Durling also insists that no run is ever quite perfect, but you must always strive to improve on your last run, while experience counts for a lot – particularly when it comes to knowing how far you can push on cold tyres at the start of the run. Incidentally, at events the drivers will usually spin up their rear wheels before the start line, there’s a patch of tarmac for this, which helps to clean them and also get a little heat into them just for good measure.
And how good are these hill climb guys? Well, there’s one former British hill climb champ who goes by the name of Andy Priaulx, and he’s now the reigning World Touring Car champion. That’d be pretty good, then…
So, think you’ve got what it takes to make a good hill climb driver, too, or do you just fancy a particularly intense driving challenge? Well if you do the first step is to attend a school, naturally, and PT can highly recommend the one at Gurston Down for a start. After that you need to apply for a non-race National B licence from the Motor Sports Association – the body that runs motorsport in the UK. The Blue Book, which is pretty much the bible of British motorsport, will come with your licence, and within its pages you’ll find all you’ll need to do in terms of buying helmets and overalls, modifying your car, and so on. Next step is to join a club, and then it’s time to hit the hills.
See you at the top.
Focus… focus… focus. Still seems strange that the first part of the Gurston Down hill climb course is downhill, but now’s not the time to think about that, just concentrate on the narrow strip of tarmac ahead. Lights switch from red to green, but no need to go just yet, remember that in hill climbing the clock starts when you do. Get the revs up to about 4000, drop the clutch, feel the rear end of the Caterham twitch a little as the tyres scrabble for grip… The run, and the fun, has just begun…
Someone once memorably described speed hill climbing as ‘Formula 1 up the garden path’. And at the highest level that’s just about got it in a nutshell: 600bhp-plus hi-tech carbon-tubbed single seaters generating big fat dollops of downforce, racing against the clock up short, sharp narrow country lanes – and reaching speeds of 150mph in the process. Now take a breath here, and just ponder on that last statement; that’s 150mph up a 12-feet wide single-track country lane…
But it’s not all about top notch high-spec race cars, as there’s a class in hill climbing and sprinting – the closely related discipline that usually takes place at race tracks or airfields, but differs in that it doesn’t require a hill – for just about any car you wish to mention, including, with some clubs at least, classes for bog-standard road cars.
Sounds like a great way to get hassle free and relatively cheap motorsport then. But best of all there’s even a couple of schools where you can take your own car to learn the art of driving up a twisting, extraordinarily narrow ribbon of asphalt as rapidly as possible. These schools are a great way to get a feel for this very addictive sport, while also giving you the opportunity to have a good old fashioned blat up a country lane without the worry of meeting a Massey Ferguson coming the other way.
There’s one such school at Gurston Down in Wiltshire. It’s been in existence for about eight years now and it runs three courses a year for up to 30 pupils at a time, all for the reasonable forkage of just £150, which includes a hearty lunch and big wedges of cake at the end of the day – civilised see, this hill climbing lark.
The Gurston Down Hill Climb School is situated at the hill climb venue of the same name, a challenging little track that twists its way up some 967 metres of presentation-fudge-box effect Wiltshire arable. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a more charming venue for motorsport; the only problem with it is that some of that scenery can be very solid indeed. Luckily, there are people on hand to keep you on the straight and (very) narrow.
…First corner’s called Hollow, but not ‘Sleepy Hollow’, this one. You need to be wide awake here. A lift of the throttle and a very fast left, threading the eye of the needle and trying not to think about the steep, solid bank that’s ready to collect you if you get it wrong. Let the car drift over to the right on the exit now…
The day starts with an introduction to the instructors and a short lecture on what hill climbing’s all about, how to get involved in the sport, the equipment you’ll need and so on. Simon Durling is the school’s chief instructor and also one of the country’s top hill climb drivers. He’s been in the sport for 20 years and currently competes in a 550bhp Gould single seater which bears the number four, which means he’s the fourth best hill climber in the UK, so he has a fair idea of what this sport is all about.
“It’s a very pure form of motorsport,” says Durling. “Because it’s just you against the clock, and then there’s the challenge of driving up narrow roads with trees and hedges close by.”
All of which became apparent when we were separated into three groups in order to walk the course; the expression ‘run off’ doesn’t seem to be in the hill climber’s lexicon. And it’s not just the flora you need to watch, either; the fauna can create a few problems, too. “If a pheasant does happen to get in your way, my advice is hit it. It’s safer than hitting the barrier,” Durling told us.
This walk is not a nature ramble, though. In fact it’s a very important part of a day on the hill. It’s all about building up a picture in your mind of what you might expect, every small piece of information – in terms of the state of the surface, possible points of reference for braking etc. – is important and many hill climb drivers will even be seen crouching down low to give themselves a cockpit-eye’s view of a corner as they walk the course. You also need to look out for damp patches if it’s been wet, where the kerbs are high and who knows, maybe even cow vomit – after all, everybody knows the hills are alive with the sound of moo-sick… sorry, couldn’t resist.
…Karousel’s next, a pair of sharp right turns, and a test of the car’s brakes; it’s frantic, everything’s happening very quickly. Taking in lots more speed into the first part than you would have believed was possible at the start of the day, trying not to think about the little line of hay bales that’s all that stands between you and the trees. The steep slope helps with the retardation for the second right-hander, a quick change down, and through as smoothly as possible, taking just a little bit of kerb on the way…
You can take just about any car to the Gurston school, just as long as it’s road legal, as school principal Andrew Hext explained: “We insist on this on a school day, because of the level of safety cover available. But we do get some very quick cars turning up, with quite a few Ferraris and Porsches coming along in the past.”
On the day PT attended there was quite an eclectic little gathering, including a snarling Mazda RX-7, a smattering of oldish MGs, a Lotus Elan, a Renault 5 Turbo 2, a Lotus Elise, a Fiesta XR2, a Lister Jaguar XJS – that was just about as wide as the track – and an Audi S3. But PT’s own weapon of choice was Caterham’s new Roadsport, a light and narrow car with a torquey powerplant (see page 24); just the thing for this line of work.
Each driver gets eight runs up the hill during the day, which is four more than you’d get at most hill climb events – where it’s usually two practice runs and two competitive runs – so it’s good value. Some regular competitors use the school for extra practice.
Actually, the time you get on track at a hill climb is very short when you compare it to track days or racing, after all four 40 second runs at Gurston means only two minutes and 40 seconds of track time. But that’s the point, in a way. Hill climbing is all about distilling the experience, you can pack a lot of thrills into that couple of minutes – and it also takes far less out of your car, incidentally.
So, if you want to do well, you need to concentrate very hard indeed in order to maximise your time on the hill. One slip and your run is just about ruined in terms of the time. And as Durling says: “That’s very character forming.” Also, you have to bear in mind that each run will start on cold tyres and with cold brakes too, which is just a little something extra to think about as you barrel into the first corner.
At the school they don’t time the runs, instead they place instructors at different parts of the hill, people like Durling himself, Simon McBeath – a well-known motorsport writer as well as a rapid hill climber – and Jim Robinson, all of whom know the hill intimately.
…Ashes. The final left hander, a tricky one this, a dab of the brakes, must remember to turn in later than last time – yes, about there – aiming for the end of the kerbing, squeeze on the power, the back of the Caterham’s stepping out too much again. It’s great fun, but it would cost precious tenths in an event, as some of the car’s all-important momentum on to the long drag to the finish is squandered…
Each instructor is responsible for a particular portion of the track, and after a pair of runs – you wait in the holding area at the top of the course after a run, then come back down the hill in a long line – they will talk you through your attempts, tell you where you’re going wrong, and give you tips on how to improve your lines. There are cones to mark braking and turn-in points in the morning, but later these are taken away once you’re familiar with the track. It’s all done in a friendly way, but the great thing is the individual attention you’re given. You don’t get that at many of the racing driver schools.
You also start to think about your runs a lot more as the day progresses and it becomes apparent that this, the mental preparation if you like, is as important in hill climbing as the car preparation and the driving, and I can guarantee that you’ll be thinking about the foibles of that little snake of tarmac a long time after you’ve finished your day at the school.
…The last stretch, quick and sure gear changes now – a field stretching out to the left, just Armco between you and the trees a metre or so to the right – the finish line is on a blind left/right kink, flat out, near 90 in the Caterham; heady stuff, a twitch of the wrists on the tiny wheel and it’s through. Must remember not to lift suddenly, that could cause a sudden weight transfer and a spin into the field, or worse… The fastest cars will go through that last kink at close to 150mph during an event. Respect.
Mountain Excitement
So what makes a good hill climb driver? “I think you’ve got to be fairly unflappable,” says Simon Durling. “If you happen to see the time of the chap in front and you’ve got to beat it, then there’s no use getting in a state – you have got to be very cool, calm and collected.”
Out on the course, Durling says, like with other forms of racing, it’s all about keeping things as smooth as possible: “All the while you’re going sideways, you’re not going forwards,” he says. But you also need to be aggressive, too, driving at ten-tenths from the word go: “You don’t get a lap or two to play yourself in. You have to be absolutely on it from the time the green light goes on.”
And even before that green light goes on you need to be thinking your way up the course, just as a Formula 1 driver and other pro racers will visualise a lap, a hill climb driver will visualise a run – arguably it’s even more important in hill climbing, where hundredths of a second can mean the difference between winning or losing.
“At the start line the top boys sit there with their eyes shut,” says Andrew Hext. “As the marshals are positioning their car precisely on the start line they sit there and you’ll see their hand movements in the car as they’re mentally driving the hill even before they begin their run.”
Once on the run, Durling says, he almost always brakes in a straight line, and recommends that if you can heel and toe – the process where you blip the throttle with the side of the foot as the gear lever passes through neutral on the downchange – then it’s a great help, keeping the car settled, the gear changes smooth, and also preventing driven wheel lock ups.
Durling also insists that no run is ever quite perfect, but you must always strive to improve on your last run, while experience counts for a lot – particularly when it comes to knowing how far you can push on cold tyres at the start of the run. Incidentally, at events the drivers will usually spin up their rear wheels before the start line, there’s a patch of tarmac for this, which helps to clean them and also get a little heat into them just for good measure.
And how good are these hill climb guys? Well, there’s one former British hill climb champ who goes by the name of Andy Priaulx, and he’s now the reigning World Touring Car champion. That’d be pretty good, then…
So, think you’ve got what it takes to make a good hill climb driver, too, or do you just fancy a particularly intense driving challenge? Well if you do the first step is to attend a school, naturally, and PT can highly recommend the one at Gurston Down for a start. After that you need to apply for a non-race National B licence from the Motor Sports Association – the body that runs motorsport in the UK. The Blue Book, which is pretty much the bible of British motorsport, will come with your licence, and within its pages you’ll find all you’ll need to do in terms of buying helmets and overalls, modifying your car, and so on. Next step is to join a club, and then it’s time to hit the hills.
See you at the top.
