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!