Photographing the British Hillclimb Championship at Prescott - Report by David Harbey

17 September 2024

The 2024 British Hillclimb Championship (BHC) is rushing towards the final round at Loton Park at the end of September. The ante-penultimate round was at Prescott on the first weekend in September and PistonClick was there to capture the action at the home of the Bugatti Owners Club. There was just the one Bugatti taking part this time – the Type 51 of Edmund Burgess.

The BHC includes the need to drop scores, an acknowledgement that there are rounds in Northern Ireland, Scotland (twice this year), Jersey and Guernsey. It’s currently neck and neck between Alex Summers #4 and Matt Ryder #3. Ryder took an early lead in the Championship, but the pendulum then swung to Summers, especially after Ryder didn’t score in the second run off at Shelsley in June. In the most recent rounds before Prescott however, Ryder had won all six run offs including three new hill records. Perhaps the replacement rear wing is helping …

The course was damp as I arrived for the last of the practice runs and it drizzled on and off for most of the morning to add to the challenge of negotiating the narrow strip of tarmac as it winds it’s way up to the top of the hill. 

Hillclimbing offers a wide range of classes in which to compete – from standard road cars through modified saloons and sports cars to single seaters. The top class of “Racing Cars over 2000cc” is where the fastest machinery can be seen.

Making his first visit to Prescott was Jan Yeo, more usually seen at Wiscombe Park competing in an unusual choice for hillclimbing – a 1250cc Legend 34 Ford Coupe. Legends are generally good value when racing – Jan makes sure that it looks good when hillclimbing too !

Jan says …

“Through 15 years of hillclimbing and sprinting, my one foray out of the South West has been a trip to the Midlands for a sprint at Castle Combe. With so many good value events in Devon & Cornwall to fill a season, I’ve not felt the need to travel further afield. However, I have often wondered about trying some of the more well-known hills “up north”, and the expansion of the BHC Tin Top Top Ten in 2024 it seemed like a good time to try out something new.

Our Legends car is effectively ‘standard’, run to the same spec as they do in the National Legends Championship which runs on circuits around the UK, with the exception of a diff that’s more suited to the short, sharp hills. For that reason, Shelsley and Gurston were not my first choice, seeming more like hills where power does best.

On the other hand Prescott looked much more in the wheelhouse of the car, a couple of hairpins and enough twists and turns for the nimble Legend to feel at home. 

My priority for any event is always to just bring the car back in one piece, so the weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t exactly ideal, plenty of showers for both days, sometimes light and sometimes heavier.

I was thankful to see the BBC suggest that these wouldn’t hit until Saturday afternoon, which would mean at least getting first practice up the hill in the dry … predictably that wasn’t the case, the day started damp and that meant tricky conditions for learning a new hill.

Prescott feels like a hill where you can get a lot of damage at most corners, something I often think about my local hill at Wiscombe. The first corner at Orchard is fast but with not much run off, the Pardon hairpin has a tyre barrier on the exit which is imposingly close, the middle Esses section is a rat run through Armco and with some chunky kerbs to unsettle the car.

The sting in the tail is Semi-Circle, a corner which in itself seems quite benign but has a steep drop off on the outside. I didn’t fancy testing my theory, but I suspect that getting too wide would result in a quick trip into the trees and a long delay while the rescue crew recover the car. 

Throughout the six runs I had across the weekend the conditions were different for every one. It started damp on Saturday with each run then being slightly drier. Conditions like that make it difficult to properly attack the course as the grip is always changing.

For my second practice run I pushed through the first corner at Orchard and instantly realised that the front tyres didn’t want to do what I had asked of them. It was a harmless skip across the grass with no damage, but it was a warning to be careful. I spent the rest of the weekend being cautious and being sure to bring the car home.

Sunday was even wetter and it felt like every corner had a different grip level. Again the track dried slightly through the day, not to the same level as on Saturday but enough that I felt I could push harder on the final run. As is often the case in hillclimbing I pushed just a little too hard for a good time. Too late on the brakes to some corners, too early on the throttle for others meant that there was a lot of time wasted sliding about.

The run looked entertaining enough on the Hillclimb.tv livestream, but the time wasn’t representative of what the car could do. The key though was that all wheels were pointing in the correct direction and the car went on to the trailer in the same way it came off it on Friday evening.

I’m still not sure if I’ll head back to Prescott, the hill is obviously a great challenge but logistically it’s not the easiest venue, especially as I could have competed at Wiscombe over the same weekend. The Prescott return road does make things run smoothly, but a large entry makes for a long weekend and a late finish when heading back to deepest, darkest Devon. I really would like to try it in the dry though and see what the little Legend could do.”

For the morning, I was shooting from the stretch between Orchard and Ettore’s. There is a good range of shots both as the cars pass by in front of you right to left and a longer shot as they then accelerate from Ettore’s up to the steep hairpin at Pardon, left to right. Spray from the drizzle adds to the shot here.

Walking all the way up to Ettore’s, there’s then an interesting shot looking down on the driver in the cockpit.

A recent initiative has been the introduction of a Tin Top Challenge with a run off morning and afternoon. It was perhaps not surprising in the conditions to see that rally cars performed well with Moran, son and father respectively, in their shared Skoda taking the two run offs.

In the top class, Wallace Menzies has made a return to the top three in the run offs after his difficult start to the season. His distinctive car with the dayglo yellow wheels always attracts this snapper’s attention and invariably looks very good.

Will Hall is also turning in consistently good performances in his smart-looking blue Gould. In the event, it was a morning run off win for Ryder, Menzies finished 2^nd just 0.09 seconds behind with Summers and Hall filling the next couple of places.

For the afternoon timed runs and subsequent run off I walked up the course to the Esses. As with the rest of Prescott, there are good shooting opportunities, and it is possible to use the trees to frame your shot. I’d used the 24-70mm zoom all morning – it’s a good lens, but it is not quite as “quick” as my more normal lens of choice at Prescott, the 70-200mm zoom. The latter was installed for the afternoon and some shots through the trees.

With a drying track, eventually it was slicks all the way, but the afternoon runs were punctuated by the occasional loss of grip and subsequent nosing into the barrier out of the Esses. None were captured “on film” and no major harm ensued.

I had moved down to look back to Pardon for the second tin top run off which again saw a dominant performance by the Skoda rally cars.

The second BHC run-off of the day concluded the action. Ryder made it a double win and Menzies – just 0.06 seconds behind was second again. Did his moment at Pardon cost him the win, I wonder ? So that’s eight straight wins in a row for Ryder including three extra points for hill records.

With four rounds to go, and the possibility of inclement weather, it’s too tight to call. As we write this report, the Doune round has been completed with Summers winning both run offs in mixed conditions.

Ryder’s fourth and second places leave him in a marginally better position, after allowing for dropped scores, for the final event at Loton Park. PistonClick plans to be there to see who triumphs as 2024 British Hillclimb Champion.