Motorsport: Last fight for the SM titles
The Swiss touring car mountain championship will be decided on Sunday in Les Paccots above Lake Geneva. Reto Meisel has to survive two more races without any damage, otherwise Frédéric Neff will snatch the title away from him. Either way, action and surprises are guaranteed. The Gurnigel race would have been a worthy setting for the final of the Swiss mountain championship. [...]
The Gurnigel race would have been a worthy setting for the final of the Swiss mountain championship. But for years now, the Châtel-St-Denis-Les Paccots hill climb has been the final event, attracting little interest from either drivers or visitors, although it does have its charms. The special thing about it is that the race course is located directly on the highway to Vevey and the start takes place over it on a bridge! Reto Meisel has also never started there. However, this should not prove to be a disadvantage. The man from Aargau is able to drive his Mercedes SLK 340 practically in slow gear to secure the championship title in the touring car category at the first attempt with his defect-prone own design. His final opponent in the title fight is Frédéric Neff with his over 500 hp Porsche GT3. The Bernjurassier has been the fastest driver in the InterSwiss group at every track this season and also won at Les Paccots last year. He is ten points behind Meisel in the standings.
Marcel Steiner ends the season as runner-up
Since Gurnigel, Eric Berguerand is the new champion of the racing sports cars. Since Thomas Amweg will not be competing in Châtel-St-Denis, Marcel Steiner is no longer in the running for second place in the SM. The third SM final rank will be decided - as so often in the past years - by Christian Balmer from the Bernese Oberland and Simon Hugentobler from Suhr. They will travel to the southern end of the Fribourg region with the same number of points.
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Photos: Peter Wyss
