Someone once memorably described the British Hillclimb Championship (BHC) as ‘Formula 1 up the garden path’, which was quite close to the truth a few decades ago when F1 and F2 cars and other assorted motorsport exotica would race up the very narrow, country lane-like courses. These days, however, to win in the British Championship you need a machine that is designed, built and developed for the singular purpose of reaching the top as quickly as possible.
This means the cars used in the Unlimited class, in particular, are highly specialised. So much so, it’s unlikely a current F1 car would match them in their natural environment. Packing high-level race engines, some derived from IndyCar and LMP1, and using bespoke carbon tubs and elaborate aero packages that generate huge levels of downforce, these machines can accelerate to 60mph in under two seconds and attain top speeds in excess of 150mph, on tracks that are around a mile long and sometimes only a little wider than the cars themselves.
BHC events cater for a number of classes, but the headline act is the Top 12 Runoff, where the fastest dozen cars go head-to-head at the end of the day. Interestingly, if there’s rain at some point, it’s not unknown for cars from smaller classes to spring the occasional surprise, though the Top 12 is dominated by Unlimited class runners – Class L, for over 2.0-litre cars – with some of the faster bike-engine machines also often making the cut.
‘In the Unlimited class, as long as your wings are no more than a certain width and a certain height, and your roll hoop is the correct height and construction, you can do what you want, really,’ says Del Quigley, whose DJ engineering concern builds the DJ Firestorm. ‘You can have whatever suspension you want, you can run methanol, you could even have a second power unit. All these things have been done over the years.’
Carbon trading
That level of technical freedom has attracted
