Junior-SM: A new winner at the end 🎥

Kevin Fluri's two-minute film shows the smooth course of the race from Châtel St-Denis to Les Paccots and gives the new champion a brief word at the end - and his name is Rico Thomann. After three victories in Reitnau, Anzère and Oberhallau, he only had to finish the last Swiss mountain race of 2019 in classification and would thus have collected enough points to become champion in the event of a possible victory by Pascal Siegrist.

Test of nerves
It sounded easy, but then it wasn't. After all, Sandro Müller's accident in the fourth and first practice run on Sunday morning tore at the nerves of the title favorite.

Rico Thomann: "Until then, my nervousness was not great. Sandro's accident gave me pause for thought. I slowed down beforehand and refocused on the race on this very fast track, on which we practically only drove at full throttle except for two braking points."

Siegrist makes it after all
The 25-year-old from Winterthur could therefore live well with third place and was pleased with Pascal Siegrist's victory. The latter, aware that the new champion was no longer risking much, sensed his chance and took it.

Pascal Siegrist: "I soon felt comfortable on this track, was able to push and go to the limit without taking big risks. After two close losses to Rico, I didn't want to lose a third time and was able to call up my performance with clean runs. It could have been completely different for me. Instead of being runner-up now, I could have just finished fourth, so I'm very satisfied now."

The 26-year-old car mechanic from Safenwil (not at Emil Frey, but in his parents' garage) is notably only the fourth race winner in what is now the third season of the Swiss Race Academy from Seelisberg. Both Rolf Reding in 2017 and Thomas Schmid in 2018 won all four races.

Two third in the championship
Michael Müller also achieved his best result of the season with second place. After the soon-to-be 20-year-old from Glarus failed to get going in the first two races, he felt this was, in his own words, damage limitation. Especially since this was just enough for third place in the championship, tied on points with Gianluca Forcella from Engadine, who came fourth in Paccots.

Over the year, they have exactly the same rankings and beat the same number of opponents due to the restriction of participants. Because also no FIA run counted to the Berg-SM Junior, there is no more passage in the regulations of ASS, which could prevent the ex-aequo ranking. A curiosity and novelty in the Swiss championship.

Clear second half of ranking
While the Top 4 always fought out the first four ranks among themselves, Marco Grilli was "best of the rest" in Paccots for the third time. For the initially very self-confident and ambitious martial artist, this was a disappointment, as he had set his sights on victory. However, the gap between him and Forcella was only eight tenths of a second.

Noah Suter was slightly behind in sixth and last place, although the relative of F3000 pilot Robin Faustini, who had an accident in Anzère, was again much faster than in Oberhallau. In the SM table Grilli, Sandro Müller and Suter are ranked 5th to 7th.

Starting signal for the 2020 season
It is already clear that the Swiss Junior Mountain Championship will continue in 2020. Racing will continue with standardized Toyota GT86s prepared centrally in Seelisberg in accordance with SuperSeries regulations. The conditions of participation and the registration form are available under the link https://www.drivingevent.ch/race-academy-schweizer-bergmeisterschaft-junior/bewirb-dich-jetzt ready online.

AutoSprintCH will accompany the entire selection and next year's races as a media partner. Such a permanent media presence is otherwise not granted to newcomers.

https://www.drivingevent.ch/race-academy-schweizer-bergmeisterschaft-junior/resultate-2019

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