Driving Uphill

Moving away from an uphill start always feels a lot more challenging than moving away from a downhill.

When you are facing an uphill it’s always important that you give as much gas as necessary. The steeper the hill the more gas you’ll need to give.

Prepare for driving the car as normal, making sure you fully feel the biting point, give some gas and hold onto the gas (it’s imperative that you hold onto the gas as not giving enough gas may result in stalling the engine), release the handbrake and keep your feet still. The car should start to climb the hill now.

Changing gears uphill. Changing gears uphill usually means that you will have to change gears later than normal. The steeper the hill, the later the gear change should be. For example if you normally change gears at 10mph, now you may need to change gears at 15mph or even 20mph as gravity is completely against you at that point. The moment you come off the gas to change gears your car will start to lose momentum. So if you started to change at 10mph on a steep hill by the time you changed to second gear, came off the clutch and went back on the gas again you might find yourself doing around 5mph which can possibly result in your car stalling as second gear would not be happy travelling at 5mph on such a steep hill.

You’ll be much better off changing at 15mph so by the time you’ve changed gears you’ll end up doing around 10mph and the car should be fine with climbing the hill doing 10mph in second gear.

When you stop at an uphill you might find it much easier to raise the handbrake in order so that you can get the biting point again without your car rolling back. If your car does start to roll back whilst you’re trying to get the biting point you run the risk of stalling as you are trying to move your car forward whilst its already moving backwards.

Giving a bit more gas than normal always tends to help in uphill situations as the car will always struggle more to climb an uphill than it would to go downhill. Also try to hold on to the biting point a bit more than what you would on a flat surface as stalling on an uphill can lead to your car rolling back and potentially hitting the car behind.