Friday 6th June 2014

PH goes hillclimbing

Another reason to get after a cheap MX-5

---

Five grand won't get you very far in the world of modern motorsport, almost regardless of which category you want to compete in. But what if you could buy, modify and run a car for a whole season on less than that sum, including buying all your race kit, entry fees, travel and accommodation? Welcome to the world of hillclimbing a Mazda MX-5.

Step one? Hit the classifieds and bag a Mazda

Reason enough to move fast and snap up one of the dwindling number of cheap and cheerful older MX-5s or Eunos variants lurking in the PH classifieds. Moving this on to the next logical step of competition is where the MX-5 excels thanks to its reasonable performance, nifty handling and a whole industry that has built up to support the world's most popular sports car. There are also plenty of other MX-5s already competing to give you an idea of what is possible and what times you should achieve.

This is why I found myself at Wiscombe Park in Devon. As a long-time fan of both hillclimbing and the NA/Mk1 Mazda MX-5, it was time to put the two together and discover just how much fun other competitors were having.

Pacing notes
Wiscombe is one of the few mainland UK hillclimbs I had not previously visited, so stories of it being one of the most demanding were still clanging in my ears as I walked up the hill before first practice. Watching videos of others in the week leading up to this meeting, organised by the very friendly and helpful Torbay Motor Club, just don't impress how steep and continuous the course is.

Little Mazda huffs and puffs up Wiscombe Park

It's also a very technical hillclimb, demanding neat lines to preserve momentum, as well a bit of good old fashioned bravery to carry speed. Fortunately the Mazda is the perfect car to learn this type of course. Or it would have been were 'my' MX-5 not an immaculate one lady owner from new, 9,500-mile 1991 example that would be more at home in a collector's cocoon. A rude motorsport awakening awaited for this previously pampered example...

Even if the car was far more valuable than most Mk1 MX-5s, you could easily have a rattier contemporary of this car for Shed money or thereabouts, leaving enough for a season's hillclimbing. There are plenty of competitors using bargain MX-5s on the basis that if you bend it, you simply buy another one rather than fix it.

Suited and booted
Having found your car just add race numbers, timing beam strut and a couple of safety stickers, and you're ready. That kind of budget would also allow you to invest in some decent sticky but road legal tyres, generally reckoned to be worth around two seconds on typical courses. New Toyo Proxes were the tyres of choice for 'my' MX-5 and they offered decent traction off the line and through Wiscombe's bends and hairpins. More of a problem was the lack of a limited-slip differential, which really showed itself exiting the Sawbench and Martini hairpins.

Standard suspension possibly a bit soft...

My first run was a fairly slovenly 58.89, though I was pleased to be under the one minute barrier on the maiden trip. Wiscombe is unusual in having a very tight turn almost immediately after the start, which itself takes you over a low-walled bridge. Wis Corner leads on to Wis Straight and up to Bunny's Leap, which is the one section other drivers kept warning me to get right.

By going relatively slowly, Bunny's Leap was more of a gentle skip, but it also showed it should be easily possible to take flat out in the MX-5. This is because the Mk1 simply wasn't going to build enough speed for Bunny's to be the edgy crest it can be in quicker cars.

Man up
After Bunny's comes The Gate, which looks dauntingly narrow and tight on first approach. Further runs proved this could be taken more quickly than seems prudent, so long as you trust your car's suspension and brakes. The advantage of having a near showroom-fresh car was both of these elements were spot on.

Mint, original cars now rare ... so we raced it

Then come Esses One and Two, which require a lot of commitment to flow properly before a big brake and down into first gear for Sawbench Hairpin. Castle Straight is steep but fast and leads to another big braking zone into Martini Hairpin and the short sprint to the finish line.

After two practice and two timed runs, some familiarity with the course and the car resulted in a respectable 56.62 second best. For comparison, quickest time of the day went to Mike Lee in his OMS 2000M single-seater at 38.49 seconds. While the MX-5 was never going to challenge for FTD, the sense of enjoyment and competitive spirit is exactly the same.

The other advantage of hillclimbing a Mazda MX-5 is, at the end of the day, you just peel off the race numbers and head home while others are still loading cars on to trailers that cost more than your entire weekend's racing.

[HorneyMX5]

I plan to do some of this and some sprinting in mine in 2015.

Edit: I think PH could also do a nice article on AutoSolos as that is the cheapest of these kinds of events and they are brilliant fun. A day's competition can cost you as little as £60 including entry, fuel and a bacon roll!

[HorneyMX5]

GBB said:

HorneyMX5 said:

I plan to do some of this and some sprinting in mine in 2015.

Edit: I think PH could also do a nice article on AutoSolos as that is the cheapest of these kinds of events and they are brilliant fun. A day's competition can cost you as little as £60 including entry, fuel and a bacon roll!

How much are you paying for Bacon Rolls?

I think my last one cost me £40 all in!

i eat quite a few!

[HorneyMX5]

GC8 said:

I think that an MX-5 needs more thought giving to safety equipment than the car in the article has benefitted from.

Really? Motorsport is dangerous and we all know that but driving an MX5 to and from a hillclimb venue will have a greater degree of risk of death or maiming than doing four runs up the hill.

[HorneyMX5]

That's not an MX5 though is it? I'm not saying you'd be fine in a crash/roll but a 5 will be carrying much less speed than a single seater built for sprint events.