Mountain Cup: day of the beneficiaries

The list of victims of technical failures in Massongex was longer than ever before in the last few years. Not all of them are related to the material-killing track - including Martin Bürki's clutch failure.

In order to spare his VW Polo, Bürki only took part in two of the five practice runs. Nevertheless, at the pre-start for the first race run, a clutch that was not separating cleanly made itself felt.

As a result, the old fox covered the first race run without clutching and still drove four seconds faster than in practice and seven seconds faster than Beat Oertig in the Peugeot 106 Maxi, the second fastest in the E1-1600 class.

First victory for Joël Werthmüller
In order not to risk any major damage, Bürki loaded up his Polo and left the field to his opponents, who had always been beaten by worlds. After he had obtained spare parts from tuner Minichberger in Germany on Monday, his car was already running perfectly again shortly before midnight on Tuesday evening.

Martin Bürki: "The mistake was on the tuner's side. I don't blame him, because these can happen. There are worse things. What's more, I'm now pleased that at least one of our MB Motorsport team was able to take the class win."

The winner was Joël Werthmüller, who was able to put his teacher's tips into practice. With his Peugeot 106, he edged out Oertig, who had been in the lead until then, by seven thousandths to take second place thanks to his clearly better third time.

Now Rolf Reding leads the table alone
Bürki's absence also entails a new situation at the top of the table. Of the four joint leaders, only Rolf Reding was at the start apart from him. In the SuperSeries up to two liters, however, he only had the two Honda Integra of Andy Krähenbühl and Raphael Feigenwinter as opponents.

The junior champion had both of them under control and won the class again with the Toyota GT86 borrowed from Eventcenter Seelisberg. Although the driver from Schwyz only received half points, he is now the sole leader in the Berg Cup.

With three second class places Beat Oertig is now second in the table with 45 points ahead of a group of six with 40 points each. One of them is Martin Bürki, who has already taken his first strike result.

First win for Jonas Magnin
Stephan Burri, who started in the Interswiss group with his VW Polo 1600, which was identical in terms of performance, was hit even worse: as a result of a technical defect, he suffered an accident in the first race run.

After Frédéric Neff's Porsche and Gérard Nicolas' Ford Escort WRC had also fallen victim to damage, Group IS took an unusual outcome with Hervé Villoz winning in a Renault Clio.

Because Massongex was not part of the IS Trophy, only Manuel Santonastaso and Sergio Kuhn from German-speaking Switzerland were at the start alongside Burri. With the BMW 320 WTCC, however, "Santi" was at a loss on this track and in the end only third in the IS-2000.

In the also unusually weakly occupied E1-2000 Jonas Magnin celebrated his first class victory in the Honda Civic FD2000. What this is worth will be shown next week in Anzère, where the man from Fribourg almost managed this last year with great competition.

Burning BMW M1
The most regrettable retirement in Massongex was that of Nicolas Bührer from Biel. His valuable BMW M1 caught fire in the third race run. Although his first two race times were enough to win the class, this is probably little consolation for the damage done.

As in Reitnau, however, the historic group was dominated by Bührer's friend Alain Pfefferlé from the Valais. With the equally spectacular Porsche 935 Turbo from the former Group 5 from the late 1970s, Pfefferlé drove to twelfth place overall.

In the Mountain Cup, last year's runner-up is already back in third place together with Buchser, Bürki, Krieg, Niederberger and Werthmüller.

motorsport.ch