Hillclimbing has always been a hotbed of design innovation, and a whole industry has grown around the construction of low-volume single-seater racing cars. Current British Hillclimb Championship contender Alex Summers has now joined the select band of drivers who have built their own car and it has taken seven years of effort, frustration and tears. Yet the P4t is not currently destined to be a BHC challenger.
Seven years after the initial sketches, the car ran for the first time at Loton Park in late March. Those years were an emotional rollercoaster for 2015 British Hillclimb champion Summers and his family, but the result is sensational. Sleek, low, purposeful and superbly engineered, the P4t is a triumph of tenacity, determination and engineering ability.
The P4t uses the 2.5-litre Cosworth engine previously fitted to the DJ Firestorm that Summers runs in the BHC, now with a Cosworth Indycar motor. The founding concept behind the P4t was a car that would better suit and fit the women in Summers’s life: his wife Debbie and his mum Lindsay. Both are fiercely competitive hillclimbers but can struggle to get an optimum driving position.
“It’s a car for them,” explains Summers, who wants to use the project to promote women in motorsport. “It’s very different in a number of ways. Its influence is the GWR Predator and I make no apologies for that. Graeme Wight is a god to me and I hope he sees it as a compliment. Anyone who has designed, built and raced their own car, like Ray Rowan, Steve Owen, and Sean and David Gould, is a hero and they’ve been the influence and the motivation.”
With massive hands-on support from his parents Richard and Lindsay, they built the chassis from the ground up. “The donor Van Diemen was a set of brakes, a set of pedals, steering column, steering rack and stuff like that,” recounts Summers Jr. “The first iteration is steel tubing with a resin-infused carbon skin bonded together, and it’s bolted to the front and rear bulkheads on the floor. So the chassis and the body is all down to us.”
The P4t is extremely low so that smaller drivers such as the Summers women can sit on the floor of the car, without any foam or padding, and see out of the front. “When you see my mum sit in the Firestorm it highlights a very serious problem,” continues Summers, whose day job is in the automotive industry, working for the likes of Aston Martin and as a test driver for McMurtry.
Source: Autosport