The short and winding road

This is Shelsley Walsh’s first competitive meeting of the year and while it looks a dusty brown to me, people keep telling me the track is green. Following the wettest March and April anyone can remember, the surrounding fields are so waterlogged that spectators have been told they cannot attend. The rainwater that has flowed off the hillsides and across the asphalt course week after week has left the surface stained a sandy colour. You feel the lack of grip beneath your race boots. Thankfully, the weekend is forecast to be dry.

Down in the paddock, it’s the variety of machinery that grabs your attention – and that’s on this practice Saturday with only half the field present. Many more cars will turn up for the competitive running tomorrow, including swarms of French and Japanese hot hatches, a couple of Teslas (the only other EVs on the entry list) plus a host of purebred competition cars. Today, classic racing Minis rub shoulders with a Jaguar XJS, a widebody air-cooled Porsche 911, a dozen or so 1960s and ’70s Formula 2 cars, closed-body CanAm-style machines, a sole Formula 5000 McLaren and, of course, those purpose-built hillclimb cars that will set the fastest times of the weekend.

Not the fastest times of the year, though. The really quick guys, British Hillclimb Champions among them, say they’re expecting to be a couple of seconds off their personal bests this weekend. If the outright record is going to fall this year, it’ll be at the September meeting at the end of summer. Then the course will be at its quickest, thoroughly swept of any dust and grime and properly rubbered in, and the drivers dialled in, too.

I feel like a trophy hunter bowling up in a brand new Porsche worth £170,000 (with options), plus a small crew to look after it. It’s not necessarily in keeping with the spirit of clubman motorsport. But I remind myself that I’m not here to take prizes away from anybody else; just to beat that eight-year-old estate car record. It isn’t the car’s value or the team of people buzzing around it that draws the most attention, but the fact it’s an EV. Not that everyone realises. Each morning, the scrutineers shove a sound metre up the car’s backside and ask me to hold the engine at three-quarters of maximum revs. ‘But it says Turbo on the back,’ says one.

Fellow competitors wander over to us throughout the weekend, wanting to know more about the car. All are friendly and curious, and if I did detect an undercurrent of disapproval from a small handful, nobody was blunt enough to actually say anything. These are very early days for electric motorsport at the amateur level.

Motorsport UK, the governing body in this country, has worked hard in recent years to make various forms of motor racing accessible to EVs. Battery-powered cars simply aren’t well-suited to certain disciplines, such as stage rallying. The special stages and road sections are far too long for the battery range of a typical EV, and the charging infrastructure in remote locations nowhere near developed enough. But EVs can be ideal for short-form motorsport formats like sprints, autosolos, rallycross and, of course, hillclimbs.

As well as easing the burden on electric car owners who want to compete, the governing body is also equipping event organisers with the knowledge they need to accept entries from EV owners. And the reassurance, too – no, you don’t need to provide charging points, and yes, your existing fire safety protocols will be adequate. Electrified cars do still pose certain challenges, but nowadays they’re often more perceived than real.

To enter a battery-powered car, you first need to acquire an EV Passport from Motorsport UK. It’s a document that lives with the car and tells the scrutineers and marshals everything they need to know about it, like where the kill switch and jacking points are located. ‘We are not trying to electrify motorsport in this country,’ says Motorsport UK Technical Director Ian Smith. ‘Instead, we’re making motorsport more accessible to those who want to compete in electrified vehicles.’

Sixty-four feet is an important measurement in the world of hillclimbing. Cover the first 64ft in two seconds flat and you’ll pull precisely 1g away from the line. Only the very fastest cars are capable of it. With so much power and four-wheel drive, the Taycan is just about the fastest thing off the line here – faster even than the single-seaters with their fat slicks. On my very first go, a slow and steady sighting run, the Porsche reaches the 64ft mark in 2.43 seconds. It will be my slowest launch all weekend.

I’ve done a school day at Gurston Down in Wiltshire and I’ve been up here before on an Abarth media launch, but this is my very first go at competitive hillclimbing. You could be the most seasoned clubman motorsport competitor going, but when you find yourself on the start line at Shelsley Walsh or any other such venue, your heart will be pounding and your palms streaming with sweat. It’s as well I’m wearing gloves. It’s a curious mix of excitement, anticipation and the pressure of the stopwatch that makes this such a tense and nervy moment.

The tension can be close to unbearable, but the instant the flag drops, you forget it altogether. At least the launch itself is child’s play in this car. Simply choose Sport Plus mode, press hard against the brake pedal with your left foot, flatten the accelerator pedal with your right and watch for the prompt in the binnacle display. After that you simply sidestep the brake pedal and hold on.

The Taycan bursts forward, its two enormous motors somehow making 2.3 tonnes of metal, glass, rubber, plastic and leather feel like nothing. I reckon the launch phase will be my single greatest advantage over the record holding Audi RS6. On this first run, the three bends that make up the lower half of the course look all but indistinguishable to me – all gentle left-handers that you can’t quite see around. I slow the Porsche far too much for every one of them.

Towards the top of the hill the course bends hard left, then hard right again, after which you simply mash the accelerator pedal into the carpet for a flat-out dash across the line. The display in the holding area tells me my first attempt took 36.28 seconds – almost four seconds off the record.

I have five more runs today, plus two more practice runs tomorrow morning, followed by two timed runs in the afternoon. My second go is almost three seconds quicker than the first, the run after that another second quicker still. But with a best time of 32.78 seconds, I’m still some way off the estate car record. Four-tenths might not look like much on a stopwatch, but finding that time on the hill isn’t straightforward.

Even by hillclimb standards, Shelsley Walsh is narrow. The Porsche feels big here, like an airliner touching down on a grass strip, and I seem only to have space to drive right up the middle of the road. But if I’m to break that record, I will need to let the Taycan move across the width of the track, squeezing it up against the grass on corner entry and letting it run out against the sleepers on exit. I must use the full width of the road, but stray any further than that and I’ll clip a mud bank or whack into a barrier. There is simply no margin for error.

During the lunch break I walk the course with an expert, who helps me label and sort those three crucial left-handers in my mind. Three short words make all the difference: dab, lift, flat. The first corner on the course needs a quick dab of the brakes, the second a sharp lift off the accelerator while the third should be flat. Should…

Hillclimbing, I’m told, is all ‘north of the eyebrows’. You can walk the course all you like, but the only way to go really fast is to slow it all down in your mind. If it goes by in a blur, like it has done for me all morning, you’ll bleed seconds. The fastest competitors drive on instinct, so everything seems to happen very slowly. ‘Do it long enough and eventually you’ll be fiddling with the radio halfway up the hill,’ my instructor tells me.

Join me for my fourth practice run, the first after lunch. I position the car to the far right on the start line, because that’s what the experts seem to do. The early morning chill has lifted. The sun has been warming the asphalt since late morning and with every car that sprints away from the line, a little more dust is swept away and a little more rubber put down. There’s more grip now. I clock a 2.17 second dash to the 64ft marker, getting close to the magic 1g. The forcefulness of the acceleration takes me by surprise every time.

The road crests and arcs gently to the right, and the longer I keep my right foot buried the more the car feels like a runaway train that may never be stopped. Hugging the grass against the edge of the course to open up the first left-hander as wide as possible, I dab the brakes and fling the nose of the car towards the apex. It’s extraordinary how agile such a heavy car can feel. The steering is fantastically accurate too, meaning I can place the car with confidence all the way up the hill.

This first bend is crucial. Come out of it well and you’ll carry more speed right the way up the hill. Get it wrong, though, and you’re stuffed. You won’t roll anything like enough speed through the next two corners and the stopwatch will run away from you.

I jump back on the power as early as I dare, following the road as it bends again slightly to the right, then pick my moment to lift off again. The second corner is unsighted, meaning I must commit to it without being able to see what I’m committing to. Once through, the trick is to squeeze the power on again good and early, then resist the urge to lift off the power for the corner that follows. But my right foot simply won’t allow it.

Ignoring my instructions, my ankle bends and the accelerator pedal rises a little out of the carpet. I lose precious momentum. The car squats down heavily into the compression at the apex. I know right away I should never have lifted. Next time, I tell myself. Next time.

I could compete here for a full season and still not nail the braking point for the esses. You arrive at such speed that you think you must be cautious here, but the course is so steep at this point that much of your braking work is done for you by gravity. Yet again, then, I brake too early and feel crucial tenths slip away.

Turn in smartly for the tight left, avoiding the serrated kerb, accelerate again for a split second, then tip it into the right-hander before standing on the accelerator for the final run towards the flag. The bright red lights on the dot matrix display read 31.89. I’m below the record! My next two runs dip beneath the RS6’s time too, all within hundredths of a second of each other. I appear to have found my own limit, but at least I know the car and I can go quicker than the Audi. It just won’t be official until I do it tomorrow afternoon.

Next morning I wake calm and confident, but on arrival at Shelsley Walsh I realise how much cooler it is today than it had been yesterday afternoon – colder by a good seven or eight degrees. What difference might that make on the hill? I needn’t wonder for long. I get my answer the instant I sidestep the brake pedal to begin my first of two practice runs. The car squirms sideways as all four tyres spin up. I turn into the first left-hander and feel the car step out on me for the first time all weekend, the rear tyres unable to keep up with the fronts.

I’m spooked, no longer trusting the grip beneath me. I back off for the two corners that follow, survive the left-right sequence then power over the line. The display reads 34.15 seconds. Only my very first run was slower! The data shows my maximum speed on the approach to the slow left-right was 82mph, some 10mph down on my best effort yesterday. My next run is better, but I’m still slower than the RS6. With only two runs to go and the grip I’d come to trust seemingly gone for good, I’m doubting whether I’ll go home with the estate car record after all.

The nerves, the tension, the apprehension – it all comes flooding back. The pressure’s back on. I only have two chances to get this right. But as the hours pass and the sun emerges from behind the clouds, and the single-seaters and racing cars and hot hatches and handful of EVs sweep the course and put more rubber down, the grip returns to the track. I know it as I launch into my first run after lunch, the first of my two timed attempts. All four tyres bite and rather than squirming, the Taycan rockets off the line. And I know already the record will be mine.

I brake later than ever and feel the Pirellis claw into the road surface through the first corner, which gives me the confidence to carry more speed into the bend that follows. It all compounds from there, and for the first time I keep the accelerator pinned to the boards through the quick left. Before braking for the low-speed sequence I reach 94mph, comfortably the fastest I’ve been there all weekend. I can feel it, the car clearly carrying much more energy into the braking zone.

I cross the line 31.99 seconds after setting off. I’m a tenth of a second down on yesterday’s best run, but the record is mine by almost half a second. At the top of the hill I whoop and cheer, the job done, the record in the bag.

But I’ve one more attempt. Just how fast can I go? The pressure is off now and at last the nerves fade. My final launch is better still, and once again I know this run will be quicker. I brake later for the first corner, commit harder to the one that follows and stay on the power through the third bend, each corner filling me with confidence for the next. I have my best run yet through the tight left-right sequence, then blast across the line to see my fastest time of the weekend flash up on the display – 31.43 seconds.

I take the estate car record by almost a second. Though I go home with a prize for winning the EV class, I’m prouder by far to have been the fastest road car all weekend having mixed it with the racing cars. The road-going EV record is mine, too. I wish I could tell you it was my skill and bravery that made the difference, but in truth the car did the hard work. It produces such extraordinary power, and puts it down on the road so effectively, and it steers and handles so brilliantly for its weight that all you really have to do is point it up the hill and hold on.

(Incidentally, on each run the battery state of charge dropped by three or four per cent, meaning a half-charged battery might’ve been adequate for the entire weekend.)

I’ve never held a motorsport record before, though, and I’m not so stiffly phlegmatic that I don’t allow myself to enjoy it. But like I always do, I begin wondering right away how much faster I could have gone. With a few more runs, might I trim another 0.97 seconds from my best time up the 1000 tricky yards of Shelsley Walsh? I honestly don’t know. The outright record for an electric car is 30.46 seconds, set by a Jaguar Formula E car on a drizzly August day in 2018. Maybe if I didn’t brake for the first bend, and what if the second corner was taken flat…?

With thanks to everybody at Porsche GB and Shelsley Walsh for making this record attempt happen

Photography by Dan Bathie