Rotorua’s Sloan Cox has had a tight turn-around to get his banged-up Mitsubishi Evo 8 ready for next weekend’s Ben Nevis Station Golden 1200 Hillclimb.
After the glory of setting the new record (47.86secs) up the 1.6km Leadfoot Festival driveway in the Coromandel over Waitangi Weekend, in a qualifying run, Cox experienced the crushing low of crashing his self-titled ‘‘hillclimb beast’’in the final top 10 shoot out run.
‘‘I was coming in under the trees, tucked into a left-hander too much and clipped a hay bale,’’ Cox (28) said.
As a result of the damage, his Taslo Engineering team has been busy repairing suspension and steering arms, replacing a broken jackshaft and tidying up the panel damage. They will put the 750hp charger on the team transporter on Wednesday and head for Central Otago, ready to contest the two-day, 6km hillclimb event that former WRC driver Hayden Paddon has initiated.
Five years ago the Cardrona Valley’s resurrected Race to the Sky, up the Snow Farm access road also enticed Cox this far south to make his one and only appearance at the popular 15km hillclimb. He had bought his high horsepower car with this event in mind and was disappointed that 2015 was the final year that it ran. Consequently, when the Nevis hillclimb, near Bannockburn, was announced, Cox was quick to sign up.
Although his car runs a standard Mitsubishi Evo engine, it has a specialised crank that boosts the powerplant’s cubic capacity up to 2.3 litres. Adding in ‘‘custom everything,’’over the years means the hillclimb beast is now in the prime of its life, although Cox was cautious about predicting all-out victory next weekend. He has been concentrating on shorter form hillclimbs in it recently, winning Canterbury’s Ashley Forest Rallysprint in 2017.
‘‘It’s definitely going to be an experience for me and the car. It will be good to get the car to do some longer distances and try to get a good groove going,’’ he said.
Next weekend, 90 cars and motorbikes will compete in two groups of 45 up the 50% fast and 50% twisty gravel road. The top contenders, including Tony Quinn in his Pikes Peak International Hillclimbcontesting Ford Focus, will vie to lift the inaugural Ben Nevis title but to do so, they will need to beat event founder Paddon. He will be campaigning his New Zealand Rally Championship Hyundai AP4 but in hillclimb-spec guise and running as a ‘‘800bhp, big winged beast,’’ he said.
The entrants will have three runs on Saturday and another three on Sunday up what is the highest public road in New Zealand; the fastest runs from each day will be added together for final overall and class results.
Bring on the battle of the beasts.
- Catherine Pattison
Photo: Ben Crowe
