After my first event – a two day blur of nerves, thrills and figuring everything out, I went back to Harewood Hill for 2 more events and had an absolute blast.
The first, the classic and vintage event where I came 2nd in my class – albeit a class of 4, but I’ll take it! And then with 3 full days of data, I setup a Hill Climb tracker using Claude.
After giving it all my timings from practice and competitive runs, I had a decent amount of data. Giving this to an AI model, along with the circuit map, the sectors and corners names, it could help break my timed laps apart, analyse each sector and help me see where I was gaining/losing time.
I’m not going to pretend this is anything new, studying data is a mega-important part of motorsport, but for someone like me, having Claude run this for me was pretty handy.
Come the final event of the year for me, I completed some practice runs, photographed or screenshot my timings and submitted them to the Hill Climb tracker – instant analysis of each run followed.
I tried a couple of different lines and this analysis was ridiculously helpful – even just for some clarity, it all helps. As well as the analysis of the numbers, Claude tried it’s best to explain where time was being lost.
If I end up with more data next year (I’ve been looking at apps) then this could get dangerously geeky.
Either way, my 4th and final day of running at Harewood gave me my biggest smile yet. I literally yelped with joy when I saw “68.07s” come up on the boards and had the bunch of MG drivers near the finish line hoots of laughter, watching me fist pumping the air like I’d won the Grand Prix of Yorkshire. I won’t like, it felt like it.
And so yes, my first few events are done and that’s it until 2027 for the Hill Climbing. But I’m planning to be back and looking to improve – if Claude says I can do a theoretical 67.46s lap then there’s my target, let’s go!
That’s not it for track time entirely though – oh no, the bug has set in now – I’m going to try my first track day – heading over to Croft for a day with 2 gents I met at the Hill. Another Boxster driver and a fine gent in a GR4 Yaris. Wish me luck!
