Gold Rush Hill Sprint

By Jason McGarry.

Gold Rush Hill Sprint is one of the longest in Australia. It is situated on the eastern side of Mt Morgan in Central Qld about 30mins west of Rockhampton.

The public road is 3km long with 26 corners and 160m rise in elevation making it a truly unique stretch of bitumen. There were 170 entrants with over 500 people staying in the region and spending many thousands of dollars which is very welcomed, in fact we were able to get the local Newsagent/Coffee Shop to open early each morning to provide the necessary caffeine to get the day started. (Shout out to Wattle Bee Newsxpress) I am pretty sure there were only 3 Lotus Club Qld members running, Peter Quinn in his Elise, Euan McGarry in Caterham R300 and yours truly in Exige 350. There was another Lotus Evora driven by Grant Pratt in the event as well.

Although timing was causing was the normal problems first up, which reduced the number of runs achieved on the first day, the organisers really turned it around on Sunday so we ended with the planned 6 runs. Peter and myself were putting together some conservative solid runs on the first day and Euan was in in the same space as us. But Sunday morning Euan found his right foot (he hadn’t driven the Caterham for over 9 months) and achieved some great pace with him taking multiple seconds off each run, as a dad it was great see. After watching some of the video footage he is such a smooth driver compared to his dad.

In the end the 3 of us completed the weekend with no injuries except for my ego, Euan finished 4th in his class with a 1m 54.525s (21 entries, 23rd outright), Peter finished 5th in his class 2m 6.852s (19 enteries 63rd outright) and I finished 5th in class 2m 1.933s (25 enteries 104 outright).

The overall winner was Dylan Cothill in a Nissan R35 GTR with 1m 45.523s. This is a great event and I strongly encourage entering.