June 2004. Iberg, 2050m track 8% gradient, 5 right hand corners, 4 left hand corners
in Group G, only managed 3rd place from 4 entries.

Best time was 1m 12s

July. Hauenstein, 4000m, fast track, many long straights.
Saturday training, was only 4th from 5 entries, still learning the track.
On sunday, race day, managed to get 2nd place and won 75 Euro prize money.

Best time was 2m 8s.

August. Kyffhauesser, 3950m, 10% gradient 36 corners, a really good hillclimb track.
Had a great weekend, great fun learning the track and trying to go quick. On Sunday managed to win a small trophy, 3rd place in Gr G.

Best time was 2m 43s

September. Eichenbuhl, 2600m, not too steep, very twisty for the first 500m and then opens out and is faster towards the end. Finished the race on Sunday but had a slight off and bent the rear axle by driving into the ditch for 10m.

Best time, 1m 37s

October. Mickhausen, 1950m, not too steep but some very good corners for driving fast.
The car was very good and I liked the track, managed to come in 1st in both my class and the group, won 2 trophies and 150 Euro prize money. Then after the event at sruitineering; it turned out that I had an unauthorized Airfilter fitted, and was disqualified, had to give the cups and the prize money back.

Best time, 59.5s



2004 was a good start to hillclimbing in Germany, met a lot of new people and learned a lot about hillclimbing.

Rennsteig 2005, 3950m, narrow uphill track with some very tight bends. There were many accidents at Rennsteig in 2005, possibly due to the fact that it was a new venue and the drivers were still learning the track. On both the Saturday and Sunday there were many breaks, the recovery lorry had a lot of work to do. The organizing comittee also had to repair a lot of barrier over the weekend.

My first real accident happened at the end of the track, after the last corner. At the end of every race there is a marshal with a red flag and as I came around the last corner there he was waving the flag, I reacted too soon and started to brake as soon as I saw this, unfortunately the car went a bit sideways and I ended up in the ditch, nothing too serious as the ditch was just grass. However in the ditch was a 4ft high metal fence erected by the organisers and this did most of the damage to the car. After inspection back in the garage it was decided to sell the car as the work to repair the shell would be too much for me. So I stripped many parts from the shell and it was sold. I spent the next few months searching for a suitable shell to use as a hillclimb car.

April 2006 Rennsteig. The first event in April 2006 was again Rennsteig and as usual there was a last minute effort to get the car ready in time. The weekend was very cold and wet so most of the time the car ran with ‘wet tyres’. The track did dry on Sunday on one occasion and all the cars started with slicks, however it was so cold that when a big black cloud came over it didn’t rain, it snowed.

The elevation at the start is around 400m, at the end it’s around 800m, it was very strange to start in the dry with slicks and end up at the finish and everything was white. Also strange there was not a single accident, probably due to everyone going so slow, not being able to get the power down onto the road.

in 2006 there was about 9 events,

Rennsteig,
Iberg,
Wolsfeld,
Homburg,
Hauenstein,
Osnabrueck,
Eichenbuhl,
Kyfhauesser,
Mickhausen.

in 2007 there was 12 events.