European Mountain Championship: Faggioli wins, Merli works his magic 🎥
WETTERCHAOS The classic Trento-Bondone hill climb ended in severe weather with Simone Faggioli winning the day. European champion Christian Merli won the race cars just ahead of Christoph Lampert. Fabio Nassimbeni took a class victory. Impressions from the training for the 69th Trento-Bondone hill climb With a length of 17.3 kilometers and an altitude difference of 1350 meters, Trento-Bondone in South Tyrol is the queen among the [...]
Impressions from the training for the 69th hill climb Trento-Bondone
With a length of 17.3 kilometers and a difference in altitude of 1350 meters, Trento-Bondone in South Tyrol is the queen among European mountain races, comparable to Pikes Peak in the USA. And it is the only one where local hero Christian Merli has never been able to directly defeat his opponent Simone Faggioli. Merli's first victory in Trento last year was at Pikes Peak.
Advantage Faggioli
With a time of 9'00.52 (115.2 km/h) from 2017, Faggioli also holds the absolute track record. In terms of driving, challenger Christian Merli would have long been on the same level. In terms of tire material, however, the ten-time European champion with Pirelli's rubbers always has an advantage over the faster-degrading Avon slicks of the defending champion on this extremely long track. With his two 9'27 times in the two practice runs on Saturday, Merli was clearly ahead of Faggioli's 9'19 from the second practice run.
Weather chaos
However, it was not only the tires that tipped the scales on race day, but also the weather and the technology. After the touring cars had finished their run and the CN sports cars had started, first a thunderstorm and then even hail set in on Monte Bondone. This led to an interruption of about one hour, during which the weather improved again.
Until then, the fastest time in 10'13.68 was held by the fast-as-an-arrow Italian Manuel Dondi in his Fiat X1/9 with Alfa Romeo STW engine from the E2-SH group (Silhouette). Subsequently, only Simone Faggioli in his Norma-Zytek V8 sports car managed to significantly beat this template with 9'56.19 (104.5 km/h). While Faggioli fitted his sports car with rain tires, Merli chose intermediates due to the drying track.
Top all lost
Both were by no means wrong with their tire choice. Up to the fourth intermediate time measurement after 8730 meters, Merli, who had started second last, was practically on a par with Faggioli, who had been sent up the mountain long before him, in the shifted Osella FA30. At the fifth measuring point after 13.4 kilometers, the difference was only 1.2 seconds.
In the top section of the track, which was almost completely dry again, the European champion lost exactly 40 seconds not because of the tires but because the oil pressure in the Zytek LRM V8 engine dropped and at times went into emergency mode.
Merli clocked a time of 10'35.80 and was very lucky that he crossed the finish line 17 hundredths earlier than his teammate Christoph Lampert, who had fitted his Osella with rain tires. Merli almost missed out on the group win in the E2 race cars and thus the full points on his home track.
Lampert himself was therefore also fully nsatisfied with second place in the E2 race cars ("It was really very difficult conditions"). Recently, the Vorarlberg racer celebrated his biggest one-day victory to date at the Glasbach race in Germany, where Faggioli and Merli were absent, thus taking their strike result for the first half of the season.
Class win for Fabio Nassimbeni
Back to Trento: The Jurassic Fabien Bouduban came with a Norma-Zytek from Team Faggioli in training on 10'50. Like seven other riders from the group E2, the Jurassic waived the start for safety reasons.
On a still dry track, Fabio Nassimbeni delivered a strong performance with a Porsche Cayman GT4. The native of Zurich with Italian roots won the GTS class ahead of two Italians in a Porsche 997 GT4 and Ferrari F430 Challenge respectively.
Tension before the duel in Switzerland
Thus, Faggioli and Merli are still tied in the European Hillclimb Championship after Trento-Bondone. Both lead the table in category 2 of the racing sports cars with 150 points each.
After the races in Slovakia and Poland, the tenth European Mountain Championship race will take place on August 17/18 in the canton of Jura. As the fast track from St-Ursanne to Les Rangiers has now been completely resurfaced, a new record time can be expected in the course of this duel of the Italians at the highest level, weather permitting.
