Hood comes off Whats Up The Hill giving him an upset chance at $16 tonight at Auckland

A crucial gear change could be just what erratic trotter Whats Up The Hill needs to upset at Auckland on Saturday night.

Co-trainer Ray Green is expecting a much better performance in the final race from the well bred three-year-old who broke on the first bend then switched into a pace for the fourth time in seven starts last week and finished 85 lengths down the track.

“We’ve taken the hood off him, it was shutting him down too much and making him too blase.”

Trialled at Pukekohe without the hood the day after his last race, Whats Up The Hill trotted perfectly, driver Zachary Butcher reported.

“It fired him up a bit and he left the mobile like a monster,” Green said. “He started from the outside of the gate and Zac reckoned he could have led easily.”

Whats Up The Hill contested the workout solely to get his ticket from behind the mobile arm so he could race in tonight’s Metro Trotters’ Heat.

Whats Up The Hill, centre, does everything right to score at Auckland two starts back. PHOTO: Megan Liefting/Race Images.And, against pacers, he cruised up to the leader, his four-win stablemate Lincoln La Moose, before being eased out of the heat.

“When he trots, he trots well,” Green said. “He’s a lovely horse and he’s only young. He just needs to go out there and poke round some more to get experience.”

Green knows it’s hard to tip a horse whose record, while limited, is littered with errors.

“But he’s always a chance. He’d be one of the main chances tonight if he did things right.”

Whats Up The Hill, raced by Lone Star’s Trevor Casey, his parther Kate Marriott and Lincoln Farms owners John and Lynne Street, is unwanted in the fixed odds betting at $16 and $3.40.

But he showed plenty of promise in his previous start at Auckland when he outfinished the well regarded Hillbilly, a $4.50 rival tonight.

Butcher has his second racenight drive on the horse tonight.