Kempsey Sporting Car Club’s David Morrow has won the third round of the MG Car Club of Newcastle’s Mattara Tri Series Hill Climb series which took place at the club’s home course at Ringwood Park.
With around 57 drivers competing over the two-day event and getting multiple runs on two separate layouts, Morrow’s consistency over the two days saw him comfortably claim the victory over junior driver Christian Thompson and third placed Tim Blake.
Starting off with the A4 layout on Saturday, all three drivers was locked in a tight battle as Morrow steered his Krygger Suzuki to the fastest time of 64.67 seconds, while Blake’s 66.78 second run got the better of Thompson by less than two tenths.
Around two seconds behind the duo was a similar fight for position with Garry Christopherson just edging out Paul Bower by three tenths of a second to finish Saturday in fourth place.
On Sunday, with a new layout and the arrival of prominent New South Wales based hill climber, Darren Read, it was always going to be an entertaining climax to the event.
Right from the get-go on Sunday morning, Read showed why he is one of the best in the business, posting a number of strong times before eventually coming away with the day’s fastest time of 63.43 seconds.
As a result of not attending Saturday, Read finished the round in 47th .
In second place, almost five seconds behind the Hayward BH009 pilot was Morrow, who had done enough to secure the outright win for the round after neither Thompson nor Blake were able to catch him – the eventual accumulated margin coming to around seven seconds.
Remarkably, Sunday saw the roles reversed in the battle for second as Thompson’s best time was half a second faster than his rival, thus allowing the 18-year-old to leapfrog the Subaru WRX driver and secure the runner-up placing.
Like the battle on top of them, Bower and Christopherson continued their battle on Sunday, but it was Bower in his Mazda MX5 who replicated the fast charging Thompson to produce a time half a second quicker than his Westfield SE opponent to secure fourth.
With four of the top five all coming from the MG Car Club of Newcastle, the next best driver outside of the home club came through the Morrow’s fellow Kempsey Sporting Car Club member in Dean Mears, who finished the event in sixth place – his combined time less than one second slower than Christopherson.
It’s going to be a busy October for the MG Car Club of Newcastle with a club hill climb on 25 October, before they host a round of the Motorsport Australia New South Wales Hill Climb Championship on 31 October.