Our Correspondent Reports By Eddie Walder
With the Hill Climb and Sprint season over it is time for a round up. My year has included flights to the Channel Islands, Belfast and Scotland all in the pursuit of speed action for the two Haymarket weekly motorsport titles. My final trip was in early October, back to Guernsey for the little-known, dark and mysterious annual Petit Bot hill climb that rises through a tiny wooded valley on the south side of the island. It was a concentrated couple of days of action also taking in a motorcycle sprint on the local kart track, a junior motorcycle trial and finally a sand autocross meeting on Chouet beach. Rob Stevens, 2013 Midland Hill Climb Champion.
We already know the top two positions in the British Hill Climb Championship in Scott Moran and Trevor Willis. The significant news for Shelsley aficionados is that Teme Valley resident Alex Summers moved up to fourth place overall for his first ever seeded ‘number’ and sealed his first ever Championship, taking the class-based MSA Leaders title. He also won the penultimate run-off of the season at the Loton Park finale with what would become secondbest time of the day. The other top ten seeded places were settled at Loton – Roger Moran finished in fifth overall behind Alex after his drop scores were deducted, his first time outside the top four since his championship year of 1997. Wallace Menzies, the best placed Scot, was already safe in his highest ever third position. Will Hall and John Bradburn were also in best placed sixth and seventh with Jos Goodyear eighth after recovering from a torrid early season where nothing seemed to work as expected. Attention then focused on the last two seeded places where three drivers were in contention but nothing changed from Doune with Tom New and veteran Deryk Young both scoring five to remain three points apart. The unfortunate Richard Spedding finished outside the seeded places as he could not strike a blow all weekend. He finished ten adrift of Deryk who returned to a seeded place for the first time since 2010. Rob Stevens won his fifth Midland Hill Climb Championship in the series‘ 34-year history. He took just a single run at Loton to win the over 2-litre Sports Libre class which was enough to hand him the title. Final 2013 Championship Points: 1 S Moran *258pts; 2 Willis *246pts; 3 Menzies 204pts; 4 Summers 177pts; 5 R Moran *170pts; 6 Hall *128pts; 7 Bradburn 115pts; 8 Goodyear 101pts; 9 New 60pts; 10 Young 57pts. * After ‘dropped scores’ deducted. 17