Berg-SM: Unexpected victory of Marcel Steiner
MOUNTAIN RACING ANZÈRE Marcel Steiner beat Eric Berguerand on his home course in Valais. An important step towards a possible championship. Robin Faustini, only 19 years old, captured third place overall, touring car champion Reto Meisel was eliminated again and can forget about the 2017 title. The sport thrives on heroes and surprises, and that is also the case at the national hillclimb races in [...]
Sport thrives on heroes and surprises, and it's no different in Switzerland's national hillclimb races. Because Eric Berguerand was not supplied with new tires, he fought somewhat bluntly with used rubber at his home race in Anzère.
Promptly, Marcel Steiner in the LobArt sports car set the first best time with fresh racing tires. Neither was able to improve in the second run, but Berguerand was slightly faster. After the third and final race run shortly before 7 p.m., Steiner's gap was therefore only four tenths.
The defending champion managed the best of his three times with the Lola-Cosworth, although water dripped onto the left rear tire after a stone hit the radiator and the car had less good grip in right-hand corners. But Steiner remained only slightly slower and thus won by adding up the two faster times with a half-second advantage.
"I didn't really expect to win here after this was our worst race with the new LobArt last year. But this now shows that we have done a good job since then," Steiner explained.
With his second win of the season, the man from Berne extends his lead in the standings over the man from the Valais to 60 points to 52.5 points. Since Berguerand will never compete in the European Championship race in St-Ursanne, where he had a serious accident in 2007, Steiner can further increase his points lead at the next race on August 20.
The son wins the family duel
There was also a surprise in the battle for third place overall. Simon Hugentobler, who had subscribed to this position, was narrowly beaten in the Reynard 97D by his son Robin Faustini in a five-year older Reynard 92D F3000. The 19-year-old from Aargau competed in only his fourth hillclimb race with the 480 hp racing car and thus confirmed his third place overall at the German hillclimb race in Homburg a week ago in an impressive manner. Bravo!
Once again, Reto Meisel left the racecourse as the tragic hero. As in Hemberg and Reitnau, he set a new touring car record in the first race run in the cool morning. Again, however, the defending champion did not bring a second fast run to the finish line, this time he stopped presumably due to a clutch failure on the Mercedes own-built SLK 340 and thus did not qualify. The championship is now definitely over for Meisel, and the remaining races will serve as test drives under racing conditions.
On the other hand, the title prospects for Frédéric Neff and the medal chances for Roger Schnellmann are becoming more and more concrete. The Porsche driver from Moutier has been unbeaten in the InterSwiss group for a year.
Following the retirement of Meisel and the absence of Romeo Nüssli, the man from Schwyz drove his Mitsubishi Evo to virtually unchallenged overall touring car victory. Neff now leads the championship with 66.5 points ahead of Schnellmann with 60 points.
In the Swiss Hill Climb Championship Junior Rolf Reding turned the thing around - similar to Robin Faustini - in the third race run and pushed the leading Lukas Eugster still on rank 2. Separate report on it follows!
