With the weather forecast looking very average on Saturday we made the call to drive up first thing Sunday morning to the annual Northland Car Club hill climb at Doctors Rd, Ruakaka.
With a 6:15am start on Sunday it turns out the weather forecasters were correct. But we jumped in the ute and headed up north via the BP for a caffeine fix. It rained the whole way there, but we arrived at about 9am. So we sat in the ute thinking this is too wet maybe we should just go home, but then Bruce reminded me that if I didn’t race he would tell everyone that I was a girl. That was it we were racing. Off we went to fill the appropriate forms in and complete scrutineering. With the car and driver ready to go we just had to wait for the officals.
We eventually lined up for the first run, with this being the first time we had been at this event I had decided to use the first couple of runs as a see how the course is. We were lined up behind a 520hp 3 rotor 4WD Series 1 RX7 rally car off he went and we were next. Off at the start lots of wheel spin trying to get traction and around the second corner and hello I thought this was a tarmac hill climb the monster RX7 had only been using half the road his inside two tyres were in the mud and gravel and had nicely coated the road in marble sized stones. Wet road, marble sized stones and a light car equals a slippery ride. This was how it was to remain for the rest of the day, we all had 6 attempts at the hill and by the end of it we had used some petrol and tyres, made the car dirty and had a good time.
We will have to wait until the results get posted to see how we ended up. It was nice to drive home in the warm dry ute. We will go back to do this event again, bring on the Autocross on Labour day.
Scott
