For the second weekend on the bounce Matthew Ryder was the toast of the British Hillclimb Championship as he took a mighty double victory at Shelsley Walsh.
As the championship battle between Ryder and Alex Summers intensifies, Ryder returned to Shelsley for the first time since his high speed accident there in June.
However, the Gould GR59 driver was immediately on the pace and in the first of the championship run-offs was within six hundredths of a second off the outright record set by Sean Gould in the same car three years earlier.
Later, as shadows started to lengthen over the Worcestershire hill, the pace was fractionally slower but Ryder was still victorious with a 22.62s shot. Summers chased hard all weekend and two second places limited the damage in points’ terms, leaving Ryder with a two point advantage once dropped scores are factored in.
“I'm two points up now. But there's still eight run-offs to come and I can't afford a bad score. I wanted to give it my best shot this weekend, after the last time we were here,” said Ryder of an impressive performance.
As the sun bore down on another bumper crowd at the famous 1000 yard venue, Ryder watched Summers dip to 22.83s in the first run-off and knew that he had to dig deep. A sensational 22.43s climb brought spontaneous applause from the crowd as he came so close to the 22.37s outright record.
Will Hall ran third with a 23.13s and edged Wallace Menzies backed to fourth by just 100th of a second, as Dave Uren and Trevor Willis rounded out the top six. Behind Gould, Paul Haimes was as quick as ever for eighth his 1300cc turbo Gould, while another star of the first run-off was young Alex Coles who took commitment to a whole new level in Kelvin Broad's Force TA 1600 to bag ninth, after obliterating his own personal best for the hill.
At the end of a long, hot day the temperature dipped a little for the second run-off and as fastest qualifier Ryder again ran last, knowing what others had done. Hall set the bar high with a fine 23.03s in his Gould GR59 but then Summers went quicker with a 22.89s, just six hundredths off his earlier time. Finally, with the last run of the weekend, Ryder kept his cool and delivered again with a fabulous 22.62s.
Summers was quick to acknowledge his rival’s pace, accepting that Ryder was crucially getting through the Esses a little faster than the Firestorm. Summers knew that keeping Hall back in third was vital to mitigate the points loss to Ryder. “I got a really good launch on that one, but we do lose time in the Esses,” admitted Summers.
“It's been a good day,” said Hall after two third places ahead of Wallace Menzies. Elsewhere in the second run-off, Maltese visitor Zac Zammit did well to bag eighth place in his 1300t Empire as Haimes and Johnathen Varley both got their smaller-engined cars into the points.
In the Tin Top run-off Damien Bradley starred in the opener to win and broke the coveted closed car record for Shelsley, leaving it at 27.77s in his mighty Subaru Legacy. Simon Bainbridge and Roger Moran led the chase and later Bainbridge got the mighty SBR Chrono to the top in 27.95s to bag victory from Bradley and Moran.
Written by Paul Lawrence and published in partnership with Autosport.
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