The North West Car Club is the latest club around the country to make a grand return to motorsport with this weekend’s Precision Exhaust 31 Bends of Barrington Hillclimb its first hill climb since February.
Taking place at its home course at Lake Barrington, the Tasmanian club has had an overwhelming response to the hill climb with more than 75 people putting their name down for the event, which is capped at 60.
While there is a record number of competitors confirmed to run in the event, there is no shortage of star power with the battle for top honours most likely to come down to last year’s winner against the current track record holder.
Prominent Tasmanian rally star Eddie Maguire is the driver who holds the fastest time at the 2.3km course and he headlines a long list of talented drivers, most notably Ben Newman, who took the event by storm in 2019, coming within tenths of Maguire’s record.
Those two drivers won’t be the only ones going for the win with Hobart-based Jamie Lonergan also in action, while 2WD driver Nathan Oliver enters as a dark horse due to his powerful Mazda RX8, which is armed with a V8 Chev engine.
With such a strong entry list, Clerk of Course, Stephen Mott believed anything was possible when it came to the front runners.
“Ben Newman is having another run and after he got so close to the track record last year, Eddie Maguire must have thought he was getting a bit close for comfort so it’s great to see him there this weekend,” Mott said.
“Jamie is also coming up from Hobart and he is always fast too. He will be running his Subaru WRX instead of his normal GTR so that will be interesting to see the battle between those three guys.
“Nathan is another driver to look out for because of his unusual combination, but he was very fast at the last event and was really giving the front runners a run for their money.
“So we’re really looking forward to it. It’s going to be on for outright honours and we hope to give competitors good value for money even with such a big field of cars.”
Mott was also pleased with the general interest surrounding the event and was confident the club was more experienced running an event in the current climate having successfully held the CJR Enterprises Hellyer Sprint Rally in September.
“It’s nice to get back into things after such a long break. There has been a lot more work this time round, but the flip side of that is we’ve had such a great response from competitors,” Mott explained.
“What’s great is that we have both ends of the spectrum too. We have some really fast experienced guys in the state, but we also have around 10 competitors making their debut with us, which is great.
“I think the interest is there because hill climbs in Tasmania have been building over the past 10 years in popularity. There is a lot going on at the moment around a lot of tracks and series and I think after the COVID break too, people are desperate to compete again.
“The rally was our first post COVID-19 event and we learnt a lot from that, so we’re going to transfer all that knowledge into this weekend, implement those measures and hopefully have a good safe event.”
Throughout the day, competitors will have around five runs at the 31-turn hill climb as a result of the event being extended due to daylight savings.
The Precision Exhaust 31 Bends of Barrington Hillclimb takes place at Lake Barrington on Saturday 10 October.