Dean Tighe has put on a clinical display in Mount Cotton to claim the third round of the Carric Accounting & Business Services - Tighe CAMS 2019 Mt Cotton Hillclimb Series.

 

Needing only four runs out of the 11 available to a healthy field of 70 competitors, it took Tighe just two runs to claim an unbeatable time of 37.09 seconds before bettering it in his next two runs with the same time of 36.69 seconds.

 

Not only did Tighe comfortably claim the round, but he also managed to walk away with a new class record after beating his own set record from 2016, a result he was happy with.

 

“It’s always nice to win and I ended up matching my times from the Queensland Hill Climb Championship which I was happy with,” Tighe said.

 

“It wasn’t a bad weekend at all, I quite enjoyed it actually. It was quite slippery on the first run but once I changed them, it was pretty good.

 

“It was a warm day on Sunday, so I sat out of a couple of rounds to give everything a rest and settle things down - I didn’t have anyone to beat so I just wanted concentrate on the top six run at the end of the day.”

In second place, a further one and half seconds behind was Michael von Rappard and after picking up the outright lead in his second run of the day, the Dallara Hayabusa F392 pilot posted his fastest time of 38.42 seconds on his third attempt.

 

von Rappard held his lead for another three runs before Tighe took the lead from him on the seventh run and after only one attempt of trying to regain his lead, von Rappard called it day, settling with a well deserved runner-up in both class and outright.

After picking up the first fastest time of the day before being overtaken by von Rappard, Jim Milliner ended the day in third place after he was unable to surpass his time of 39.41 obtained in his second run of the day.

 

After spending the final five runs battling for fourth place, Warwick Hutchinson secured his final time of 40.89 on the last run of the day, while Paul van Wijk rounded out the top five with a time of 41.26.

 

At the end of the day, a special top six shootout took place with drivers getting one last chance to better their times and as Tighe improved dramatically, taking almost half a second off his original best time, Jim Milner and Warwick Hutchinson also slightly improved their times too making it a successful weekend. 

With the top 10 being made up of all open wheel, single seaters, the best of the rest came in the form of Michael Larymore who steered his Toyota M2 to 11th place with an outright time of 44.92 seconds.

Other notable results to come out of the round was Bruce Jackson who ended the day as the best MG pilot and Jeff Watson who came away with the Most Improved award after starting the day with a time of 52. 54 and finishing on 49.25.