I did the Mt. Equinox Hillclimb last year in the Sonett. Having never been to the hill before, I was thrilled with the 5th best time of the weekend (in the dry) and 2nd best time on Sunday in the wet.
Best dry run (Saturday Aug 21, 2010): http://youtu.be/UhvfiJiwTQA
Only wet run (Sunday Aug 22, 2010): http://youtu.be/ogbCjJNQ-9M
We had so much fun, we went back again this year. The Sonett was undergoing some surgery however, so I took the Formula S. I learned quickly that the Formula S, in its current configuration, is a hopeless hillclimber. The gearing is just all wrong. Plus, I found out Sunday morning that we had low compression in one cylinder. So I parked it. When you only have three cylinders, a single under-performing one is fairly crippling.
Dad let me take the Lotus up though!
http://youtu.be/Qzw4IGtv4rQ
I made a TON of driving mistakes. Missing my turn-in points for the hairpins were the most egregious of my errors. But the one-handed driving necessitated by a transmission that would jump out of gear made things a little extra challenging. Then, as you see, there were yellow flags in the last sector. So turning in the 3rd fastest time for the weekend (and beating my Dad in the same car by 3 seconds) wasn't too bad in the final tally.
That's 15% max incline, 6% minimum incline, and 3650 feet of altitude gain over 5.2 miles.
