Ready for blast off
We look ahead to the British Hillclimb Championship
After missing the 2020 season, the British Hillclimb Championship is set for a truly stunning campaign this year, with as many as 10 potential event winners and more than half a dozen serious title contenders.
The BHC predates every other
British championship having started back in 1947, when hillclimbing was the first branch of motorsport to get reestablished after the war. It was really ahead of its time as British Formula 3, British touring cars and the British Rally Championship all came considerably later.
Over the years, the BHC has delivered outstanding action on narrow strips of asphalt at famous venues like Shelsley Walsh, Prescott and Doune in what is the ultimate test of man and machine against the clock. It is one of the few places where single-seaters are allowed to run largely free in terms of technical regulations. Current standard-setting power-to-weight ratios and 0-60mph stats are up in F1 territory.
From 1947 right through to 2019, an unbroken run of 73 years, the BHC delivered year after year until Covid brought it to a full stop last year.
Now, after a year out, hundreds of competitors are raring to go again in a sport where tenths or even hundredths of a second really count. While the headlines are taken by the fastest single-seaters, hillclimbing has classes and championships for everything from road-going production cars to classic sports and GT cars.
The 2021 BHC season will still be a little shorter than normal thanks to Covid as the annual July trip to the Channel Island hills of Bouley Bay and Val des Terres was cancelled some time ago due to ongoing concerns over travel arrangements. Meanwhile, the visit to Craigantlet in Northern Ireland has been pushed back from May until September. But all the regular mainland hills are on the schedule and the season visits Prescott, Shelsley Walsh, Loton Park, Wiscombe Park, Doune, Gurston
Down, Harewood and Barbon Manor.
Each hill has its own characteristics, and each hill favours different cars from an entry that is typified by a diverse array of chassis and engine combinations. The big hitters come from the racing car classes where the over two-litre cars pack the top side of 600bhp in projectiles that weigh under 450kg, so the power-to-weight ratios are stunning. Yet, the top end of hillclimbing, where the fastest 12 return to the line for the top 12 run-offs, is not all about the big-engined cars. Heroic results in smaller-engined cars are not uncommon.
These are cars that employ launch control and traction control as well as sequential gearboxes, clever electronics and smart dampers and there’s even now a tyre battle running between
Pirelli and Avon. It is the purest form of competitive motorsport. There are no ballast rules, no penalties, no driver gradings and no extended pitstops. Simply, the fastest person to the top of the hill is the one who takes the glory.
Arguably, there is no other singleseater category in UK motorsport that allows such freedom of technical expression. There are no control rules here, no control chassis, no control tyres and no spec gearboxes. It is an open competition and although the times are invariably incredibly close, the leading times are achieved in very diverse ways.
There was a time when the top end of hillclimbing was dominated by former race cars. Formula 1 and Formula 2 cars in particular, and even for a while Formula 5000s, but the days when Brabhams, Marches and McLarens were the weapons of choice are long gone. Purpose-built single-seaters for the hills are smaller, nimbler, lighter and built solely for hillclimbing.
Pilbeam led the charge, with 17 titles in two decades and Gould has now won 19 of the last 22 British titles.
Only the OMS of Trevor Willis has interrupted the Gould-en era of top flight hillclimbing.
A whole industry has developed to build single-seaters for hillclimbing, right across the capacity classes and