And We’re Off!
Round 1 kicked off last week and what a way to start!
Firehawk Picks Up Some Serious Speed!
If you didn’t know by now racing runs in the blood of Turbo Dynamics founder Peter Marsh as his late father Tony Marsh has an unbeatable record (in the Guinness Book of Records) of 6 times British Hillclimb Champion, 2 separate hat tricks 10 years apart.
The Gurston Down Speed Hillclimb last weekend had 2 separate events. First up on Saturday was Round 1 of the Hamilton Classic ACSMC Hillclimb Championship. Both Peter & Simon Marsh (Brother & co-racing driver) used this opportunity to treat it as a test event to iron out some further issues and prepare for the Sunday event.
Saturday
The race was on but the weather took a turn for the worse becoming cold and miserable. With this in mind they decided to use this opportunity as a test event in preparation for Sunday.
Founder of Turbo Dynamics Peter describes the race from his point of view:
“I had an ‘Off’ at the high speed hollow bend, left the track and went onto the grass. It ripped some of the underfloor away from the car. It could not be repaired so apart from cleaning all the mud and grass away there was nothing we could do and so had to run the car without these panels.”
Sadly Peter D. Smith got the fastest time of the day on the Saturday and was their main competitor. Below are his times:
Sunday
Their late father Tony would have been proud to see the Marsh brothers, Simon and Peter, battling hard for outright honours at Gurston Down hillclimb’s opening home championship event of the year on April 17th. Peter Marsh led Simon Marsh by a hundredth of a second at the break in their supercharged DJ Firehawk-Suzuki, but it was Simon that got the edge by a tenth, with a 29.65sec shot on the last run of the day, to take Fastest Time of the Day and lead the Cavendish Ships Stores BARC(SW) Top Ten Challenge after round one. In a weekend’s sport notable for close competition, the winner of the previous day’s event, Peter D Smith, chased hard in his Force-Suzuki to finish within two tenths of Sunday’s FTD man and finish third in the Challenge line-up. But although not registered for Challenge points, Gurston sponsor Peter Sexton returned after a year’s layoff, edging out Smith’s single seater by two hundredths to take third fastest overall in his Force sports libre car.
