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Opportunity Knox Hillclimbing in Canada
The Leavitt Machinery Knox Mountain Hillclimb is run annually on Knox Mountain Park Road, in the City of Kelowna, British Columbia. The Western Canadian road, while paved, is narrow with off-camber corners, and steep grades; a nice Sunday drive for sure, but hardly a race track. It is 2.2 miles (3.5km) long, and climbs approximately 800 feet (245 meters) in elevation for an average grade of 6.7%. It is a true challenge to drivers who come from many States as wll as other Canadian Provinces.
The 62nd annual Leavitt Machinery Knox Mountain hill climb had a stacked field in 2018 with an incredible thirteen drivers in five different classes making it up the hill under the magical two-minute mark. The top three drivers produced runs that would rank in the top ten fastest times ever on Knox Mountain and that was impressive indeed! The Knox Mountain hill climb is the longest Aran Cook in his FL class Arco X10
running sealed surface hill climb in North America. Having run in the Okanagan Valley of BC since 1958. It is also the last Confederation of Autosport Car Clubs recognised hill climb in Canada. The overall record has been held since 2007 by John Haftner in his highly modified turbo-charged TUI SuperVee single seater. No one has ever really come close to his time of 1:37.065. The next nearest time having been run by Joe Cheng back in 2002 with a 1:43.834. Any time under two minutes is incredibly fast, to achieve a sub two minute racers have to average more than 66-miles per hour up the 2.2 mile course with three hairpin turns which many cars negotiate in first gear. This year saw a few returning Kings of the Hill, including two notable GT cars. Wouter Bouman was back this year with his incredible triple rotor 1993 Mazda RX7. Bouman from Nanaimo, BC was King of the Hill in 2015, 2016 and again in 2017 with his incredible GTO classed car. He has owned
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Larry Sandham, Mini Clubman/Vauxhall in GTX Class
and refined this car over the last twenty plus years of racing and competes with it all over the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. This year he had changed to a slightly smaller impeller wheel on the turbo in order to make the car a little more driveable. In 2017 the car was capable of more than 900 horse power which he told the author made it very difficult to drive. So this year he returned to the hill with some bigger tires and only around 600 horse power to aid the driveability. One of his biggest rivals in recent years has been Andre Marziali, he was King of the Kill in 2018 as well as runner-up to Wouter in 2017. He runs an incredible looking BMW M3 with a ton of his own designed and built custom aero parts. The roof has been chopped and rebuilt in carbon fibre as well as the doors and various other body panels, all this has brought the car down to an incredible dry weight of just 2200pounds! Couple this with a super charged M3 engine with around 500 wheel horse power the weekend was shaping up for an epic battle between these two former winners. Adding to these previous winners a couple of dark horses came out of nowhere to challenge these two Knox Hillclimb regulars. Aran Cook from Edmonton, Alberta was here in 2018 with a very rare Arcobelino X10, just one hundred of these cars were built in Italy with the aim being to create a one make series to rival Formula Ford. Some twenty were imported to Canada as a buy-in motorcycle
engine spec series in Alberta. However the series fizzled out and the remaining cars were sold off. Aran bought his damaged and not running but he made some repairs in time for the 2018 Knox Mountain event. After the 2018 event he knew huge improvements where possible so completely rebuilt it over the winter. In his own words only the chassis from the knees forward is original, the rest rebuilt to his own design. Also out was the original Yamaha engine, replaced with a 2010 Kawasaki ZX10R engine. He then designed his own aero package and used all of these improvements to devastating effect! Another driver who would come out of nowhere to set blisteringly quick times was Stefan Denham, a rookie to the hill he brought along
Roger Flesher, Vintage Class Sunbeam Tiger
the Surgeline tuned 2004 Subaru Impreza STI, with round 500 horse power sent to the ground via 315 section slicks, he proved to be right on the pace from the word go. Four women were on the entry list vying for the Queen of the Hill award. Their weapons of choice varied from a 550 horse power Subaru STI, a 1972 MG BGT, a Honda CRX and a BMW 330CI, proving all makes and models can be used in hillclimb competition. Saturday morning started out dry but a little cool, Aran Cook showed his intentions early on with an incredible time of 1:51.412, that was an incredible half second faster than his fastest time from 2018 on a dirty non rubbered in track! This would set the tone for the weekend with the
