If F1 had no rules: the car with five outright hillclimb records – car pictures of the week
In issue 336 of evo Magazine, we had an audience with the Gould GR59, a dominant hillclimb car with five records to its name. These are our favourite shots
How to describe Gould Racing? Most succinctly, the top class of the British Hill Climb Championship could be otherwise described as the ‘Gould Show’, given that the team’s cars have won 20 times in the last 23 years.
In issue 336 of evo Magazine, we had an audience with the Gould GR59, a Judd V8-powered single-seater that’s broken outright records at no less than five British hill climb venues over the last four seasons, including at Shelsley Walsh in 2021. Sean and David Gould talked us through what makes this car so incredibly competitive and how it was devised:
> McLaren-Honda MP4/5B: Anatomy of a V10 F1 champion
'As David Gould recalls: ‘It was Wallace Menzies who badgered us the most to get a V8 car to win the title [it clearly worked, with Menzies subsequently winning the British Championship four times in a sister car].
'But which engine would it be? F1 units of the ’90s were too old, and a screaming 3-litre V10 or 2.4-litre V8 not practical, so another area of motorsport provided the answer: LMP2 endurance racing and a Judd 4-litre V8. ‘This was a relatively affordable engine compared to the others; they were available at Judd’s and they had quite a few spare parts on the shelf,’ David says. Moreover, Sean wanted an engine that had more than enough power and torque to do whatever he wanted in the future. It meant they could develop the chassis first and generate the grip before turning up the horsepower – as indeed they did. It now produces 686bhp (625bhp in previous years) and 380lb ft of torque, and in a car weighing just 420kg, so the power-to-weight ratio is more than 1600bhp per ton.' – Toby Moody, motorsport journalist and evo contributor, who interviewed the Gould family about the GR59.
Most motorsport disciplines these days come under fan criticism for the overly prescriptive rules that dictate what competitors can and can’t do with the cars. From the aero to how much power a car has, how it produces that power, what tyres it uses, how much space it occupies on the road and so much more besides, the rule books often leave very little room for creativity. They control exactly how these cars look and drive, and are about as sizable and dense as the stone blocks that comprise the pyramids.
Not so in the world of hillclimbing, which is what makes it so interesting and what makes the cars so compelling.
