The sun was shining and records were being broken during a fantastic day of hill climb action at Fairbairn Park last weekend.  

More than 50 of ACT’s best hill climb competitors took to the track at Southern District Motorsport Association’s (SDMA) home circuit for a round of the Motorsport Australia ACT Hill Climb Championship, as well as the clubs own one-lap hill climb series.  

Each competitor tackled up to six runs around the popular local circuit, with their fastest time counting towards both the outright and class results.  

In the end, it was Matthew Brown in the Audi RS4 that not only posted the fastest time of the day, but also broke the all-time record.  

A time of 43.53 seconds on his second-to-last run bested the previous record of 43.59 seconds, while it was also just under one second faster than second-place runner, Jeffery Nichols time of 44.40 seconds.  

Rounding out the top three places for the day was Paul Stringfellow, whose best time of 44.96 seconds on his fourth run was enough to edge out higher-powered All Wheel Drive class rival, Scott D’Este’s time of 45.58 seconds.  

Alongside their fantastic outright results, Stringfellow wasn’t the only one to take top honours in his class, with Brown leading the way for the SV’s while Nichols was the driver to beat in the Sports Racing division.  

There were also plenty of other class winners across the day, with the three most notable being Andrew Ericson in 2WD, Colin Chandler in AWD and Aaron Domio in Sports Sedans – with all three competitors also breaking their class records.  

Sean Martin was also impressive on the day in his Mazda MX5, posting the fastest time of 46.97 seconds to outlast an event-high eight other competitors to take the high-powered 2WD class honours.

SDMA president John Templeton was pleased with the running of the event and was happy to see records being broken across multiple classes.

“It was a fantastic day, the fine, sunny weather meant we had a great spectator turnout throughout the day with 200-300 people showing up,” Templeton said.  

“It was good to see four class records broken across the day, everyone was really competitive – especially in the later runs when the weather got a bit warmer.  

“When we showed up, it was below zero-degrees. The cars struggled to perform at their best but the later it got, the faster they went.  

“All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and we look forward to finishing out the year.”

The Southern District Motorsport Associations Hillclimb Series will return to Fairbairn Park next month for the seventh round of its one-lap format on 8 October.