There was a fantastic turnout of 23 Ferraris, all glinting in the morning sun at this somewhat unlovely venue. The hillclimb series continues to go from strength to strength with huge interest and enthusiasm from a growing number of drivers and a friendly, jovial social scene in the paddock. Indeed, there would be bigger entries at many other venues but for capping by the organisers. It was a real shame that I couldn’t take pictures of the long line of lovely cars*, including Geoff Dark’s 308GTB and Phil Whitehead’s F355GTB with their buffed up tyres (Tyre Shine available at the £1 shop, so I’m told!).

For seven drivers, MIRA was a place they had not ventured to before, so they had their own individual competition going on. Barrie Wood was also like a virgin; out for the very first time in his de-spec'd F355 Challenge car.

Chris Butler had only recently returned from his wedding to Ali Dixon in Italy. CONGRATULATIONS Chris and Ali. Of course, Chris had also taken the Ferrari on honeymoon (not sure if this counts as bigamy). He was a little concerned about her (the car) taking in too much Italian dust, as she seemed to have some breathing problems, but that could have just been something to do with the wedding night. Unfortunately, Mrs Butler couldn’t make it to MIRA as she had been ceremonially chained to the new kitchen sink with just a long enough run to reach the Aga.

Practice run 1 for the Ferrari horde began with no timing equipment working. It turned out that it had been wiped out in two places on the track. After an hour’s break between P1 and P2 there was Some Important Advice was being given out by Chris Butler, who advised Pauline to squirt hard between the two corners and this would require a bigger squirt than that was needed at Prescott. All very technical, but it seemed to help. After a long delay, and several inquiries with officials, no one could figure out whether the timing was working or not. There was talk that the ‘old skool’ use of stopwatches may by applied, but the electronics were obviously scared by that proposition and decided to start working suddenly after all at the start of the first competitive run (which saw the hyper-competitive Butler and Tomlin racing to the toilets).

The track was very dry and the sky was quite cloudy for the start of the run which saw the early runners trying hard in places, but several were over-cautious and braking too early before the control tower. Mark Hargreaves (308GTB) set the early pace with a time of 61.8s. The following six drivers were being tentative and couldn’t beat Mark’s time, but Jeff Cooper in the 360 showed great speed down the back straight again and recorded a very good 58.9s run, despite several gear changes around the final bend. Sub 60 was the target to beat for the next six drivers, but the only one who came close was John Day with 60.98s. Pauline Goodwin was back in her own car after cooling problems in practice caused by an air lock, but fluffed a gear change (forgot gear blocker!) along the back straight and lost momentum.

Barrie Wood was another one who missed a gear in his F355. David Hathaway (348) was driving out of his socks, in fact too hard as he spun, accelerating too soon on the exit of the tight left-hander. Andrew Holman (348) was quick (and loud) achieving a very good 58.2s. Mark Buckland (355) came in after Andrew with a time of just over 60s, which he was pleased at. Phil Whitehead (355) was looking very quick and stormed through the finish with a fabulous 55.7s run, over a second faster than his personal best – quite remarkable. This set a target for the others to beat, but none of them could manage to do so, the nearest being Chris Butler (last year’s winner here) with 56.3s in his 355, followed by David Tomlin (355) with a 57.4s and Richard Prior (348ts) with 57.5s.

In the interval, the air temperature dropped and rain clouds were clearly visible in the distance. Phil was on his knees praying for some of the time and the rest of the time he was doing a rarely seen aboriginal rain dance (either that or he also needed the toilet). Chris Butler admitted that he had checked his tyre pressures ‘last June or July’, [he's lying, there’s a picture of him doing it at Bouley – Ed.] so was clearly in a strong position. On returning from the toilet, Phil discovered a dark puddle under the rear end of his car. Fearing the worst, he was about to make some checks when someone confessed to kicking over the dregs of a can of Coke, and that the puddle wasn’t an oil leak after all.

The cars set off on Run 2 with fading light and increasing humidity. Several of the early runners couldn’t improve on their first run times. Both Charles Haynes (348GTC) and Sergio Ransford (308) managed to take about 2.5s off their times and Jeff Cooper managed a 0.7s improvement, with vigorous use of the horn around the Control Tower area. Colin Campbell took off 6 seconds, but still found himself in last place in his 246GT Dino. Pauline Goodwin made a massive 5.7 second improvement in her second run, recording 60.24s, behind Jeff Cooper’s time of 58.20s in the 360. At this stage, with 11 drivers gone, Pauline was second behind Jeff on PEP corrected times.

Barrie Wood, Peter Wilson (348), David Hathaway and Mark Buckland all improved their times but could not surpass Jeff Cooper’s 360 time. Andrew Holman was pushing hard and snaking the back end of the car through the bends, so (but?) he lost a second or so. Philip Whitehead produced another excellent run of 56.2s, half a second slower than his first run. Chris Butler, keen to gain championship points after missing a couple of rounds, romped home in 55.17s, thrashing Phil’s R1 time of 55.7s and giving him the lead. Despite improvements of around 1 second from Geoff Dark (308m) and Richard Prior and 1.5s in a super smooth run by David Tomlin, Chris remained in the lead and not only took the scratch win, but also the 20 points on his PEP corrected time. Geoff Dark picked up 17 points and Richard Prior the 15 points.

Lower down the field, Jeff Wilson did fabulously well to come 7th on scratch time and 8th with PEP correction in his 360, though the MIRA circuit is more suited to the faster tipi. Andrew Holman and Chris Hitchman (355) were also worthy of note, with good times and good points. Hopefully Lorraine H will be competing later in the year after her return from the Galapagos Islands!

So, on we went to Shelsley Walsh with Richard Prior leading the championship on 84 points, Geoff Dark on 71 points, Chris Butler on 55 points and Nick Taylor on 50 points (Chris Butler with the highest mean of 18.3 points, having only completed 3 rounds).

* MIRA is the UK Motor Industry Research Association and photography is not allowed. Mind you what are you gonna see these days? The latest Morgan?

Click here for the results.

Click here for the Championship positions.

Click here to return to the Ferrari Hill Climb Championship page.

The author's explanation for PG's good starts

An aid for drivers to describe their runs in detail to their loved ones

An attractive alternative to the above for the above

Pics by L.S. Clarky and Google Earth