The fourth round from the 2012 ICC Hillclimb Championship held recently produced a third different winner when Matthew Zammit propelled his Suzuki-powered Service-Express Van Diemen to overall victory in Xagħra.
He clocked the fastest time of the day besides achieving the best time for Group 6.
Zammit’s exploits have become common knowledge in Sicily lately and on home ground he is also becoming an ever increasing threat as his performance in Gozo confirmed.
The runner-up spot went to Hubert Camilleri.
The 2011 champion has been having one of those seasons, one that he would be glad to forget as transmission glitches marred most of his races before Xagħra.
However, following plenty of team effort and some modifications to his McLaren-Garage Chevron, he was back in the reckoning and also won his class in the Gozo race.
Zach Zammit reserved his place on the podium with his Urban Jungle Ralt, clocking a good enough time to outpace last year’s winner in Xagħra, Alan Curmi, for third place.
The hillclimb attracted an encouraging entry of 60 cars.
As the start time approached, the sun was up and bright and by 10.30 a.m. all drivers were wheeling their cars out to get tyres nicely warmed up.
The feedback coming from that early run was that the dust deposited on the slippery road was causing extremely low levels of traction.
Indeed, some drivers struggled to get more power down and resorted to short shifting to prevent wheel-spin. By the time the first timed-run was up, grip levels improved significantly and all participants were making most of the better road conditions.
The championship is split into six groups, each divided into classes according to engine capacity.
In Autocross, Tony Agius was dominant with his familiar yellow Escort and the Group 1 (standard cars) winner was young Kurt Camilleri (Mitsubishi Evo).
David Galea was again fastest with his Subaru Impreza in Group 2 for modified saloons besides placing a creditable seventh overall.
The star of Group 3 was John Zammit on board a Carfi Lotus Elise, placing ninth overall just three tenths of a second away from Galea’s Subaru Impreza.
Joseph Cutajar won Group 4 in his ever-popular Cosworth-powered Ford Escort Mk2.
Group 5 was rather tight with Mark Micallef emerging fastest from the competition in his Radical Prosport.