HALL AND RYDER SHARE THE HILLCLIMB GLORY

Will Hall and Matthew Ryder were the winners at Prescott as the new British Hillclimb Championship season opened with a glorious day of competition.

Hall's victory in the opening run-off was hugely popular but was achieved by the slimmest of margins of just 100th of a second over Wallace Menzies with Ryder third. Then, at the end of the afternoon, Ryder bounced back to take a resounding victory over Menzies and Hall.

By any measure, this was a fantastic day for Hillclimbing. Prescott looked its very best in warm sunshine and a packed crowd witnessed epic competition across a huge entry.

Tyres were a major talking point as Nova works to bring a new supply of tyres into the championship. That’s likely to be in July and some drivers switched to Hoosier as an alternative. Eventually, it was Nova, formerly Avon, which won the day. But this is a topic that is going to run and run over the coming weeks of the season.

In the first run-off Menzies put a marker down at 35.72s but Hall, still recovering from a recent operation, turned up the wick and stole it by a 100th of a second. Ryder was last to run, and much was expected of the defending champion. His 35.80s was good enough for third but belied a gearbox issue.

“It was hesitating on every upshift and I'd lost about 15mph before the first corner,” said Ryder. Rescuing third was a fortunate result and the team set about trying to resolve the issue before the second runs.

Matt Ryder attacks Prescott’s tricky Ettores Bend

At the end of the afternoon, Hall, Alex Summers and Menzies all dipped under the 36s mark to give Ryder a clear target. He set a scorching 35.38s to take victory by a healthy margin. However, the gearbox was still a worry and he cut two up and down shifts to reduce risk. “I went all the way from Pardon to the finish in second gear,” explained Ryder. “Normally we'd go up to third and then back to second twice in that section but I didn't want to take any risks. I was frustrated, but chuffed to get third on the first run because I thought it would be eighth or ninth with the problem I was having.”

Hall was rightly pleased with his day in his Gould GR59. “The car’s a joy now. It's more me now and I've just got to work at it,” he said. “I was probably just not brave enough into Semi Circle,” he admitted. Menzies, too, was pleased with the weekend in his GR59. “we've made more changes and it's been really good.”

Summers had an experimental day with the DJ Firestorm and split his time between Avon and Hoosier. Eventually he switched back to Avons for the final run-off and banked a strong fourth place. “It's a development process,” he said of the work with the Hoosiers. “The front is the issue with mid-corner understeer. But it's a big change, and we’ve spent three years optimising the car for Avons.”

Sean Gould shared fourth and fifth places with Summers as Trevor Willis claimed two sixth places. “We couldn't quite get the front end to work,” said Willis, after very limited pre-season running.

Another massive star of the day was young Alex Coles, who took Kelvin Broad’s motorbike-engined Force to two seventh places with another display of raw natural ability.

Written by Paul Lawrence and published in partnership with Autosport

Photos by Paul & Ben Lawrence