THERE’S A MAN in a luminescent green bib shouting at me, just beyond my window. I can’t hear him over the metallic strain of the turbocharged motor being tickled by my right foot and the ‘whup whup’ of my heartbeat. Still, I know exactly what he is saying as he’s placed his right hand ahead of the windscreen and is slowly counting down his five digits. Out of my peripheral vision I can almost see him mouth the words ‘five, four, three, two … one!’ My gloved hands are wrapped too tightly around the wheel. It’s warm, I’m tense and constantly having to remind myself to breathe in and out. A muffled shout ‘Go!’ and the hand is pulled away, signalling the launch of my final assault on the 1.9km ribbon of Tarmac that constitutes the Renault Simola Hillclimb. What on earth am I doing here?

IMAGE GALLERY

STARTING AT THE BEGINNING

Well to answer that we need to go back a bit. Since 2010 Renault has been inviting a handful of the country’s motoring journalists to participate in the annual Knysna hillclimb, an MSA sanctioned event set against the gorgeous Simola Golf Estate. The event itself was born in 2009 after the demise of the King of the Mountain event held at Gydo Pass in Ceres. So Simola it is then, and a more schizophrenic blend of nature and pistons you won’t find this side of the Goodwood Festival of Speed. To qualify, journo racers had to endure a gymkhana knock-out round in stock Renault Twingo Gordinis. Only four would make it through (Warning! The following paragraphs might be steeped in sarcasm or dementia – who can tell?) and suddenly that Renault Sandero I bought for my wife at the end of last year had a purpose beyond grocery shopping and the school run. In my mind, it was the perfect foil for some last-minute handbrake manoeuvres and J-turns and, with its simple front-wheel drive and puny motor, would get me into the correct mind space to dominate the gymkhana held at Killarney Raceway, which I proceeded to do. Boom – I was in! Was I taking this too seriously? Who can tell, but I wasn’t done…

To do well on a hillclimb I’d need to tackle some hills and some of the most intense climbs are to be found along the Argus Cycle Tour route, so I bought a bicycle and did that too. Bonus points – I lost some extra kilos in the process, thus improving my power-to-weight ratio, which I heard was a good strategy. But still, I wasn’t happy with my preparation thus far, and decided to seek an interview from the man who won the first Simola Hillclimb, none other than Mr. Sarel van der Merwe. His advice was to go only as fast as you need to, to win. This only confused me, so I found another decent racing driver, M. Alain Prost, who I believe has spent some time racing Renaults. His advice was in French. In retrospect, the interviews might have been a waste of time. Rebuild track confidence and learn to love helmet hair? Well, that will be last month’s Blacktop Rally in a KTM X-Bow then – check. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

Now before I run through one raw, unfiltered lap, I’d like to point out that my final run was also my tenth – it had taken me quite some time to get familiar with the new car and new road, measuring my slow progress all the time against the prospect of landing upturned on the mountainside with a massive audience and some unsympathetic hosts. ‘Thanks for the car, sorry I couldn’t give it back to you in the condition you gave it to me … or with its wheels still on” wasn’t going to go down too well. My first attempt was absolutely dismal. At 60.1 seconds it was painfully slow. ‘Where are your gloves?’ said a scary marshal. ‘They said I wouldn’t need any …” I stammered back. “If you don’t have gloves, I’m not letting you go!” was the retort. I was next in the queue. Flat panic ensued. I hopped out and made friends, borrowed some gloves and got back into my car all in about 17 seconds, frazzled but race ready. Then confusion as I mistake the tyre warm-up line for the staging line and proceed to botch my first launch and overshoot the start. M-u-s-t c-a-l-m d-o-w-n. There are quite a few people (well, everyone…) watching my futile attempts at getting on with it by now, and this realisation does nothing to steadymy nerves. The counting man sends me off and for that minute I gingerly negotiate the lefts and rights, chicanes and straights of this short but fast course – and abruptly it was over. I’d gone from the hostile environment of a race course to the brick-paved driveways of a golf resort in the passing of an instant. A driveway that goes on and on and … paranoia sets in and I become obsessed with the idea that I’ve gotten lost and when next I’m summoned to race I’ll be stuck behind a queue of golf carts on Hole 7, sobbing into my massive helmet. Somehow I got back to the pits, where I quickly went into listening mode, absorbing advice and overhearing tips from fellow drivers of all sorts of exotic machines … nuggets of information, mostly conflicting. My very next run would be 56 seconds long, still poor – but showing progress, and continued to do so until it all came down to that final run.

You can attribute this ability to improve largely to the car. I’ve always enjoyed the RenaultSport cars and regard the Mégane Cup as the ultimate hot hatch. This Trophy model is superior, with new 19-inch Bridgestone Potenza RA050A rubber and outputs boosted to 195kW and 360Nm. I still maintain that it’s an easy car to drive quickly, but here I was forced to put my money where my visor was. Through my many runs I had played with all the throttle settings and traction configurations but ultimately settled on zero traction control and extreme throttle. You know, video game settings. But with still no reset button in sight.

CUT TO THE CHASE

“Go!” I had the revs bobbing gently at 1800rpm, low enough to pull off with force but not so high as to burn rubber and clutch plate into oblivion when I got rolling and piled on the revs. Tyres shrieked and the engine induction roared through the cabin as I modulated left and right pedals. The turbocharger was pinging like a mad thing as I peeled through first gear and hit the limiter (still with some agony from the tyres). Second is snatched with barely any give off the throttle. I blitz through a mild chicane, then the quick-shift process is repeated and I’m in third. Its aural madness as tyres and engine roar, the turbo sings amidst road noise and it’s all bounced through the trees and hills of Simola before collecting in my brain – absolute mania I tell you! I short-shift third into fourth gear for the upcoming complex, a left kink immediately followed by a long sweeping right.

‘Take it flat out, take it flat, TAKE IT FLAT!’ I have had several mantras during this weekend, this one I’m quite negotiable on, and just as I’m about to dive in I unpin the throttle halfway until the exit reveals itself ,then its foot to the carpet once more. The good news is that I’m done shifting for the rest of the climb, relying on the high torque of forced aspiration to pull me through. I explode onto the left side of the straight at around the national speed limit. Grip levels are reassuring and the engine remains sonorous on this long, straight section. Around me the trees are a blur. Ahead of me awaits the course’s toughest bend, a leftie that from my vantage point looks as though it leads nowhere. Up until now I’ve made up (or lost) most of my time testing braking and turn-in points for this challenge. My last attempt at a late brake had rocked the car with ABS pulses, a sign that I was going quick enough but compromising on smoothness, and it’s the smooth runs that yield the best times. Still, this corner had claimed far too many victims over the weekend for me to become complacent. In fact, the hill would see six cars into the shrubbery, some never to return.

The hard charge continues and at last glance 180kph glared back at me from the speedo. I won’t look there again! I can tell by the engine’s pitch that I’ve closed in on the red line just as I enter my braking zone. I throttle-off. A firm boot to the brake pedal scrubs off speed (maybe too much?) and a deft tug at the wheel tucks the Renault’s nose into the turn. I can see the exit and no sooner than the revs drop do I tramp the right pedal back to maximum attack position and once again rely on that turbo grunt to pull me clear and onto the first set of chicanes. Right then left, the sound of Bridgestones abusing the surface underneath them as lateral grip levels are tortured, along with the soft pinging of stones kicked up along the Trophy’s metal flanks provide treble to the engine’s bass as I keep my heavy foot flat. The suspension, so compliant in the Cup, feels even better here in the Trophy – I can’t quantify it exactly, but it is doing a brilliant job of taking the punishment and transferring it into forward progress. The steering, too, is proving telepathic, allowing me to get on and off the natural racing line to avoid dirty patches, wet and oily smears, imperfections that remind me that despite the tyre barriers and spectator stands, every other day of the year this is a public road, not a racing circuit. I enter the next chicane and am forced to unpin the throttle once more, briefly – a testament to the fact that I’ve gotten here quicker than I have all weekend. Still the Mégane stays true and pointed in the right direction, even past the embankment that I’d seen a similar RS plough through on the previous day. I cross the line on the left side of the road, my brain unclenching and neurons reverting to a slower transmission as I allow the lavish lakes and woods of the Simola landscape to creep into my state of mind.

COMING DOWN, THE MOUNTAIN

Schizophrenia: I mentioned it earlier and it really is the total theme of proceedings as you trundle the long road back to the pits. Deon Joubert said it best – ‘It’s not like touring cars or any other kind of racing. You sit in your car, people lean in and chat to you on the line, you’re shaking hands, things go wrong, then literally ten seconds later you are flying along a course at maximum speed with no margin for error, and then some more seconds later you take off your helmet, you’re all alone and you make your way back down.’ Still, I imagine racing drivers can flip the switch a lot better than I can. This bit was my favourite time in off mode though, meandering back down to the pits and re-running the course in my mind, knowing where I went quicker and fearing where I might have gone slower, all the while guessing my final time. I managed to do my last run in 52 seconds dead, a far cry from my first minute-long attempt, but still only good enough to be classified as average amongst this lot. The Renault Mégane RS265 Trophy, however, was brilliant throughout.

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