Jake Hill was back on the top of the podium as he returned to the Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend.
It is as Hill calls it “one of my favourite weekends of the year” he headed to the beautiful grounds of Goodwood House for the Festival of Speed, this year being asked to drive a truly spectacular machine, the 1990 Nissan 300SX Turbo raced in the GTO class in the IMSA Sportscar series in the USA.
Era Motorsport would run the car for it’s owner Jim Bartel, and only received the car from the USA on the Monday prior to the event, so were working hard to get the car prepared in time for Goodwood.
“The crew have done a brilliant job getting the car ready, but we will be venturing into the unknown in terms of how to run the car – even the tyres are unused but are two years old – so it will be interesting!
Hill took part in two demo runs on Thursday, and further runs plus practice for the ‘Shoot Out’ on Friday, and discovered the car was misfiring slightly, as he learned the handling and braking characteristics of the car.
Saturday saw qualifying and Hill put in a strong run to qualify 12th overall and 2nd in the ‘Specials’ class with a time of 52.78.
“The car was good but still not quite where we hoped, but we have a plan for the final on Sunday – can’t wait to get stuck in!”
Late on a blisteringly hot afternoon on Sunday, Hill unleashed the striking Red, White and Blue machine up the 1.17 mile hill, cutting the corner and kicking up dust at the second corner and clearly totally committed, slithering across the line to set a stunning 48.28 second time – taking him to the top of the times.
As Hill’s competitors took to the hill, it looked like Florent Moulin in the 2001 Dodge Viper was on to pip Hill, only to just miss out by less than 0.2 seconds, meaning Hill secured Class-Victory, his 5th Win in the Goodwood Shootout.
“I cannot tell you how pleased I am! the car was just superb and a massive thanks goes to Alex Summers who is also running with Era Motorsport. Alex is a British Hillclimb Champion and an expert on ‘mapping’ engines, and he went back to the hotel last night and came up with a solution. Not only was the misfire gone but we gained a whole heap of power too!
“Thanks so much to the car’s owner Jim Bartel for trusting me with this car, and the folks at Era Motorsport for preparing the car so well, plus His Grace for inviting me to take part again – the fans were great, we had some of our personal partners and their guests from ABGO, H-Squared and Sunbelt here too – so a great weekend!”
Images courtesy of Dominic Fraser and Rob Schaverien