The North West Car Club (NWCC) has run another successful edition of the Precision Exhaust Barrington Hillclimb with Nathan Stones narrowly claiming victory in what was an extremely competitive event.

An impressive field of 59 competitors took part in the event, with each driver given five runs to set the fastest time. However, it was Stones who took home the win by only sixth tenths of a second.
 
Behind the wheel of Evolution V car, Stones continually improved on his times throughout the day, going from eighth fastest on the first run to recording the fastest time of the event on his fourth run.
 
Despite taking out the event, Stones was challenged for much of the day as the second placed Igor van Gerwen continually matched Stones’s times, beating him on three runs.
 
However, van Gerwen couldn’t beat the leader when it mattered, with the Celica GT4 driver’s fastest time of 1:40.91 coming on his fourth run and falling just short of Stones.

"The event was really good and it was really well organised, which is a typical for a north west car club event," Stones said.

"It feels really good to win the event and has given me a bit more confidence behind the wheel.

"It was good to have close competition with everyone, especially Igor van Gerwen as we were swapping times all day.

"Outside of the that battle with Igor, getting up track was the other big challenge as there is 31 corners, so trying to get all of them right is the biggest challenge.

"It's just good to get a win and it was an excellent day."
 
Taking out third place was Dave McCullagh, who finished a further one second off van Gerwen, however he managed to edge out Leigh ford and Darren Anderson who rounded out the top five.
 
The 2022 event proved quite close for much of the event with a number of different lead changes across the five runs.
 
Starting out with the fastest time was van Gerwen, who went on to eclipse the time on the second run.
 
Having missed out on the opening run, Dave McCullagh started strong on his first run of the day before setting the fastest by more than a second on his second attempt of the course.
 
McCullagh couldn’t hold onto his lead though as Stones produced his winning time of 1:40.28 on the fourth run, coming close on his fifth and final run of the day.
 
Other notable results saw Leigh Ford, Darren Anderson, Jack Costello, Stephen Smith and Damien Midgley take out class wins, while the fastest woman was Shi-Ann Hyde, who was competing in her first hill climb.

After multiple events at Lake Barrington in 2022, club representative Stephen Mott was thrilled as to how much the event was growing.

"We're pleased with another successful running of a Barrington hill climb and big thank you to all those who helped put this month's event together," Mott said.

"It has grown rapidly in recent years, so we have upped the maximum entry from 45 to 60 competitors to cater for the demand.

"Even with the increase, we have the the last four events have been oversubscribed, so it shows that we are doing something right and that people are hungrier than ever to compete in motorsport." 
 
Click here to view the full results.