Touge Alliance

Two of the Touge Alliance competitors in the 2013 Mt Alma Mile - Garry Dodd in his Subaru WRX, and Nathan Green in his R32 Skyline.

The first Come and Try hillclimb at Collingrove in 2011 was undertaken by our newest member Karen Green in her Mazda 3 SP23, along with her husband Graeme together proudly sporting the Touge Alliance club sticker across their front windshield.

To give support and tips, Karen and Graeme were accompanied by club members with previous Collingrove hill climb experience; Jared Green and Jason Bradbrook. The rest of the support team through out the day consisted of Colin Brassington, August Boehm, Samuel Koh and another recent additon to Touge Alliance, Roger,  along with his girlfriend Tina.

Despite initially pulling the slower times of the two, Graeme managed to grab the quickest time of the pair with a 47.48 - This is not a bad time for a first timer, especially considering in their class, the heavy FF Mazda's engine capacity placed them up against Evos and Skylines.  Karen was not far behind at all, only trailing by a second (48.50) and was very happy with her time.

As an added bonus, Jason came along to the event with his new GPS tracking device he purchased earlier in the week. This was promptly placed within the drink holder of the Mazda at the beginning of the day's events, in order to record each event within the hillclimb. The device has three seperate modes, with the most important two enabling those in love with statistics, numbers and computer drawn lines to track the path of the driver, their split times and where they overall lost time. For us who like pretty, shiny drawings, there is also the ability to place the recorded path against a Google Map and to place photos where they were taken along the journey. For AU $200 to purchase and around $17 for delivery Australia wide, it was a great little purchase and will be worth keeping an eye on over the course of the year as motorsport sport events heat up for the club.

The next hillclimb at Collingrove will be on the 28th of May. If you are keen to find out more, drop us a line!

Saturday August 28 dawned a cold morning as Touge Alliance members Jason Bradbrook and Jared Green met with a couple friends in the Adelaide Hills town of Kersbrook. While cold and windy it wasn’t raining which was a relief – the weather reports had been forecasting rain all week. The initial meeting was a cruise to a ‘Come and Try’ event at the Collingrove Hillclimb, one of Australia’s premier Hillclimb venues.

For those who don’t know, Hillclimb is a speed event, where one car and driver runs over a defined course against the clock. In competition cars are classified into categories so as to even out the contest and having cars of like potential performance running against each other. However, the real contest is the individual one where each driver tries on each run to improve their individual time i.e., the hill and the clock vs the car and the driver. Come and Try events like this one are an opportunity for those who have never competed at a Hillclimb to participate at low cost and minimal requirements.