Osnabrück: Brilliant performance by the Swiss
STEINER AND BRATSCHI TOP With second place overall, Marcel Steiner did just as brilliantly at the Osnabrück hill climb as the new touring car record holder Ronnie Bratschi and F3000 junior Robin Faustini. Joël Volluz suffered an accident. Of the best racing car drivers from Europe, only multi-champion Simone Faggioli, France's champion Geoffrey Schatz and Swiss Eric Berguerand were absent. Correspondingly high were [...]
Of the best racing car drivers from Europe, only multi-champion Simone Faggioli, France's champion Geoffrey Schatz and Switzerland's Eric Berguerand were missing. The level and excitement at the 52nd Int. ADAC Bergrennen Osnabrück were correspondingly high. Thanks to its efforts to attract solvent sponsors, the organizer was able to present the best-attended hill climb so far this year.
Sovereign Christian Merli
Only in the first race did European champion Christian Merli in an Osella FA30 give way to Patrik Zalesnjk on a Norma-Mugen, who started with new tires, by four hundredths. After that, the soon-to-be 47-year-old South Tyrolean pulled out all the stops and set a new record time of 50.055 for the 2030-meter short track.
If he hadn't had to take his foot off the gas briefly in the finish bend due to a dirty spot, the first 49 time would have been a fact. Merli was also the fastest in the two other runs, so that in the addition of the two best times he took the third win of the day after 2016 and 2017. In two weeks' time, Swiss fans can look forward to Merli's start at the European Championship round in St-Ursanne and the duel with compatriot Simone Faggioli.
Steiner's objective achieved
In practice still a few hundredths ahead of Zajelsnik and last year's winner Sébastien Petit in a Norma-Mugen, the Swiss champion with his LobArt-Mugen maintained third place in all race heats, with which he was quite satisfied.
Marcel Steiner: "The podium was our goal. In this class field, I could just as easily have finished sixth or eighth. My first time of 50.615 was super. Too bad there wasn't a second one under 51 seconds."
The protest due
Steiner had almost more tingles than when he was driving, because even before the end of the event he lodged a written protest with the FIA commissioners against the V8 engine in Zajelsnik's sports car. Its top speed values were so good here, as elsewhere, that there had long been displeasure behind the scenes.
Steiner Motorsport had to dig deep into its pockets for this. Because Zajelsnik refused to sign the acknowledgement of the protest, he was taken out of the classification late in the evening (see separate report).
Volluz accident
Joël Volluz in his Osella FA30 was not able to directly intervene in the duel for the overall podium, but saw the chance to push the two-time French mountain champion Petit from fourth place. Brand colleague Christoph Lampert, who did not really warm up to the narrow guardrail channel and saw this as good practice for the further European Championship rounds (soon to premiere in St-Ursanne), and FIA Hill Climb Cup champion Vaclav Janik from the Czech Republic in the Norma-Mitsubishi-Turbo had Volluz under control. Unfortunately, the man from Valais crashed in the fast finish bend in the third race run, fortunately only his car suffered serious damage.
Mature performance by Robin Faustini
In eighth place overall, or seventh after Zajelsnik's disqualification, Robin Faustini was the fastest with a conventional race car with free-standing wheels. The 21-year-old from Suhr also left the fourth Osella of Luxembourg's Tommy Rollinger and all his other F3000/Nippon colleagues behind him.
As reported in the preview, Faustini switched at short notice to the Reynard-Mugen 97D of his father Simon Hugentobler. Without having covered a meter in the original Formula Nippon, he improved from run to run. With 54.1 - a dream time for him - he was almost as fast as France's champion Geoffrey Schatz with a Formula 3000 two years ago.
Bratschi breaks eleven-year record
Ronnie Bratschi was in a class of his own in the touring car field. In his Mitsubishi Evo VIII Egmo, the man from Uri improved the touring car record, which had stood since 2008, from 58.620 to 57.718 in the very first run and then to 57.338. The previous record holder was multiple German mountain champion Norbert Brenner in an Opel Astra DTM still fitted with preheated tires at the time. His strongest competitors, on the other hand, only just made it under the minute mark.
Ronnie Bratschi: "This record had to fall, although 1.5 seconds improvement on such a short track is already a lot. For the first time this season, the car really had steam, after we had problems with the boost pressure so far."
Apart from technology or weather, nothing seems to be able to slow him down in 2019. The next two records could fall in Les Rangiers and Oberhallau. After the Swiss championship is practically over for him after two retirements, Bratschi is now motivating himself with this.
