By Trevor Jackson
IT was probably an expected result, as Dan Day stormed to his sixth straight Legend of the Lakes hill climb title in a row to surpass Peter Gazzard’s former record of five straight.
Day achieved the milestone over the weekend at the time-honoured event, with a fast 50.32-second run on Sunday morning.
While that did not break his standing record of 48.89 seconds, Day said he was pleased to claim his sixth straight title.
“The aim going into this weekend was to make sure we really put it together and secured the win,” he said.
“The same as last year, the first and second places were a good couple of seconds off, but the pressure was still on to pull off a run to put us up there.
“There was pressure to make sure the car was performing right and I did the job to get it up the hill in one piece, which is always a challenge.”
Craig Ven Diemen was close behind in second place with a time of 52.05, a fair way off in hill climbs, but it kept dropping as Sunday wore on.
“He was reeling in that time, especially on Sunday,” Day said.
“He was dropping half a second every run.
“He hasn’t driven there for a few years so it was a solid effort by him.”
Day put in times around the 51-second mark on Saturday straight off the trailer on old tyres – enough in the end to claim the win – and was pleased with that effort.
However, the course record was what he was chasing and he pushed on from there.
“Once I got those first couple of runs out of the way and got down to a low 51, I knew the car where it needed to be and it was up to me to adjust to the new tyres,” Day said.
“I used the third and fourth run on Saturday to scrub them in then got down to a 50.5 which I was happy with.”
However, the new style of tyre came with its own issues, requiring adjustments to suspension and sway bars in an attempt to extract the best from them.
“I was struggling to come to grips with how they worked,” Day said.
“It would have been good to have a second set of those to run in the shoot out – I used the best of those tyres while I was getting the car set up on them and once I had that sorted out I think the tyres were past it.”
Despite those issues Day still managed to secure the win, but the course record evaded him.
He said from a driver’s point of view it was a bit disappointing.
“As soon as I knew Kevin Mackrell wasn’t coming and we put in a couple of good times, I knew we were in the clear to win the event,” Day said.
“The next challenge was to reset the record … we didn’t quite get there which is a bit disheartening.
“But in saying that I think looking at the weekend as a whole, I know where the issue was and we will move forward into next year.
“In the end we won the event and got the six event titles – the record would have been the cherry on top.”
The format and course layout of the event dictates no practice runs in the leadup, which means using 12-month-old data each year.
To improve enough to break the current record will require a huge effort from Day, but one he certainly has not given up on.
He said micro-changes will now be required for next year’s event, with the possibility of using his previous brand of tyre.
One other highlight for the team was the inclusion of Day’s father Sean’s newly-built Subaru 22B.
It certainly turned heads and finished inside the top 10.
Dan said as a team they were all pleased with the effort to run both cars and claim such good results.
“The goal was to have both cars in the top 10 and we achieved that,” he said.
“Both cars ran faultlessly all weekend which is another big achievement.
“To have a two-car team and have them do every run without an issue, knowing we have prepared and built the cars through our workshop, it shows our team is doing the right thing too.”
