Slalom Romont: 4:1 for Philip Egli

In sporting terms, the first games of the German and Swiss teams in the 2018 World Cup attracted worldwide interest on Sunday. Broken down to national motor sport, it was the duel between Philip Egli and Marcel Maurer for the day's victory at the 48th Romont Slalom.

After the two practice runs, the Zurich driver in the Dallara with the self-developed 16V Opel-based racing engine was 369 thousandths of a second ahead of the Bernese in the modified Tatuus-Renault Midland. In warmer temperatures, they did not quite match their best times in practice in the first race run on the 2910-meter track.

Record run despite botched start
But they both stepped it up a notch in the final run. Egli's clock stopped at 1:52.981, clearly beating his own track record. Maurer, who followed, clocked 1:53.478.

Egli thus retained the upper hand by just under half a second and celebrated his fourth victory of the current season on one of his favorite tracks.

Philip Egli: "After Marcel was so close behind me in the first run, I knew I had to improve again. The second start was miserable, but after that I managed a clean run. I was quite amazed when I saw a close 52 time at the finish. Marcel, however, also offered a sensational performance."

Accordingly, last year's winner was also very pleased with himself, although it was not enough for his second win of the season.

Marcel Maurer: "Since we had rebuilt the gearshift for Romont, the first practice was a test run for me. Nevertheless, I was already on Philip. In the first race run I had no grip with a different tire compound, so I switched back to the tires from practice, which worked great. It's a shame that I lost out so narrowly despite a personal best time under the previous track record, but Philip just really put in a hammer time."

The next duel will take place next Sunday in Chamblon. Then Jean-Marc Salomon, who was absent in Romont, will certainly get involved with his Tatuus-Honda FM.

Third place overall went to Jeremy Noirat in a small TracKing Suzuki ahead of Lukas Eugster in a Formula Renault and Jean-François Chariatte in another TracKing.

Furious Martin Bürki
When describing Martin Bürki's performance, one slowly runs out of superlatives. The facts speak for themselves: never before has the defending champion been so fast in Romont in the summer (2'03.494) - in the fall race (Drognens slalom) he already realized a 02 time.

Bürki was thus the fastest touring car driver in the small VW Polo on a track whose first part corresponds to a hill climb with a long acceleration phase and two following hairpins.

Closest to him were Albin Mächler in the BMW M2, Christian Darani in the wider Fiat X1/9, Manuel Santonastaso in the BMW 320 from Group IS and Christoph Zwahlen in the Opel Kadett C.

They all won their fully occupied classes with 05 times, with Zwahlen also benefiting from René Köchli's defect on the Honda Civic. With second place in the E1-2000 in the Suzuki Swift Evo, Patrick Flammer, who recently won twice, is also still in the running for a top place in the slalom championship.

Fight for the SM podium places
After five of eight runs, Bürki and "Santi" are tied at the top of the table with 100 points each. They are followed by Egli (95), Zwahlen (90), Flammer (82), Mächler (80), Noirat (77.5) and Maurer (74).

So the battle for the podium places in the championship is still completely open. And because the IS-2000 always has a stronger field than the E1-1600, the defending champions will have to come up with something if they don't want to lose out at the end of the season on the basis of class strength alone.

As we know the sly fox, he has already done this a long time ago. Unless, of course, the problem solves itself for one or the other...

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