WILLISLIFTSTHEBRITISHCHAMPIONSHIP
OMS man lifts his second championship after battling rivals – and the conditions – at Prescott
Trevor Willis did enough to ensure he is 2017 British Hillclimb champion for the second time at Prescott last weekend.
Weather affected qualifying for both rounds but there was a stunning outcome for Richard Spedding, who triumphed each time in his Gwr-suzuki Raptor. Even though Wallace Menzies spun out in the first encounter, Willis had to wait for the conclusion of the second run-off to be declared champion and then had to suffer the customary awards presentation soaking ring-led by Menzies.
New champion Willis was as quick to acknowledge the speed of rival Spedding than mark his own success. He said: “We don’t really consider Richard to be just a quick 1600cc runner, he’s usually there with the big cars and I am always looking over my shoulder.”
Spedding, who is also almost certain to win his first class-based MSA Leaders Championship from either Sean Gould or Tim Elmer, said: “This season has been perfect for me, I could scarcely have expected five victories back in April.”
It was another great weekend for Jerseyman Jason Mourant, who qualified fastest in the day’s wettest conditions for round 30 and leapfrogged the absent Scott Moran in the points table. Mourant is now expected to go to Doune in two weeks to try and consolidate that lead yet further before Moran is back for the Loton Park finale.
Sean Gould was only half a second behind Spedding in the first shoot-out but crashed out in the wet Q2 wreaking substantial damage to the back end of the all-carbon GR59. That may threaten an appearance at his favourite Doune as Gould Engineering’s F1 carbon work has to take precedence over his own spare-time racing ambitions.
Will Hall suffered pain in the wet conditions by being out of the big points, scoring just four later to sacrifice third place overall to the rampant Spedding. This will make the last two events an interesting prospect for the fans with that podium spot at stake.
It was a day of unusual coincidences, with one being Spedding’s two BTDS being exactly the same, which is the first time this has happened to a winner since the two-in-a-day format was adopted in 1999.
Also, Willis’s championship win is a continuation of dominance by Teme Valley residents since 2011 as both Scott Moran and Alex Summers are from the area that also houses Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb.
In addition, Debbie Dunbar, the partner of absent-through-injury Summers, scored her first ever British points in both rounds. Ray Rowan got into his first showdowns since his championship-winning year of 1989. The car he used at Prescott is the same Pilbeam MP43 that Simon Fidoe used to win the Leaders in 2008 and Fidoe himself scored in both rounds in his current steed.
Multiple Midland Hillclimb champion Robert Kenrick was a late registrant for the British Championship and chose his moment well, thrusting the sensationally quick one-litre Raptor Mk2 to points both times, his first since his previous single-seater spell in the original Force PC in the late 2000s.
Paul Haimes got the now lessrecalcitrant turbo Gould into both run-offs but fell foul of a slippery Pardon hairpin as had Menzies a couple of hours earlier.
OMS championship-winning constructor Steve Owen is often a wet-track wizard and outqualified a number of bigger cars to seal a very happy day.