Interserie and Czech National Championship Brno
Last April weekend Brno hosted the first race of Czech International Championship on circuits. The main race of the meeting was an endurance race for touring, GT cars and sportcars that was run to four hour duration. Entry list included several very interesting cars that are not usual in the Czech National Championship: two sports cars Tampolli SR2-RTA 2001, of which one was a factory entered car, two Porsche 996 GT3-RS, Ferrari 360 Modena Challenge and a local special Tatra Eccora Sport V8. The entry was filled by various touring cars including BMW M3, Ford Puma or Skoda Octavia.
It was expected a little more from an Interserie race that was at Brno for the first time but poor field of only ten cars indicated little chances for a good race. Champion of several last seasons and also track record holder at Most did race at Rechberg in European Hillclimb Championship. We missed also both entered drivers with closed group C2 prototypes (Schuster and Jauslin), so the only driver of top division 3 was Walter Leitgeb with formula Fadewa F1 Ford-Cosworth. He was considerable quicker in both timed practice sessions. The only car that could mention an ancient glory of Interserie in days when only sportscars raced in, should have been an open top prototype of Kormann that was entered as March 80H. He was primarily entered to the support vintage cars race (however in our oppinion his car was in fact much newer PRC CN). But he finally withdrawn from Interserie and rather only raced and won the vintace race. So among 10 starters there were only formula racing cars. Except already mentioned Leitgeb there were only two cars in division 2: Lola-Audi Turbo with Milavec who drove Opel-Lotus in last seasons, then Henry Buettner with Reynard Ford-Cosworth F3000. The rest of the field were drivers with F3 and F2000. Except local driver Hanus Lim, the rest were total hobby-drivers running about 12 and 15 second slower per lap compared to Lim with similar car!
Accordingly to the poor entry also the first Interserie heat looked like. Leitgeb led from the start, quickly making margin of 6 seconds ahead of two men Milavec and Lim. Then he only maintained that margin without running quickly. Except insignificant midfield battles it is worth to mention just the fight between Milavec and Lim for the second position. Milavec had better start but after four laps Hanus Lim overtook him. Then they several times swapped their positions while Milavec was in advantage having run in higher division and thus having more powerful and quicker car in straights. However he finally spun and Lim finished second without problems after that.
The second Interserie race that was held a day later on Sunday noon looked pretty much the same. Only number of cars was even lower. After Grünevald retired during formation lap, only seven cars took the green light at the start of the race. Leitgeb made so large margin during first three laps again that he even didn't lost first position after having stopped for stop-and-go penatly in lap four. Then he again only maintained remaining margin ahead of Milavec, who wasn't now directly attacked by Lim. Despite that, in lap 9 Milavec span again and finished third as in the first race.
But let's have a look at the main race of the meeting, the Four Hour of Brno race. During Friday's official timed practices both Tampollis were dominating and set times just a little over two minutes. In the first practice better time was achieved by Austrian Tampolli that was driven by well known sportscar driver Wolfgang Kaufmann with Austrian Gsell and local driver Petr Valek. That was the car that won the Six Hour Brno race last autumn. The second practice was won by Italian factory Tampolli driven by Prospero and Zardo. They were considering this race just as a test session prior to the FIA Sportscar Championship race scheduled to Brno several weeks later. Both cars had always margin less than one second. Unfortunately both practices were skipped by both present Porsches after mechanical problems during Thursday test session. There was also no sign of Ferrari 360 entered by Duller Motorsport that was however kept in official practice results with a note Did Not Start. So the rest of the field was far behind the two Tampollis. With a huge margin of 20 seconds the third was the best of BMW M3 from Austrian Duller Motorsport team driven by Redhouse/Handkammer followed by Skoda Octavia of Zbožínek/Dlouhý/Berger and other BMWs. Local special Tatra was seventh. The field consisted together of 28 cars but after an accident of one Ford Puma during practice for some other support race the number was reduced by one.
During warm up session both Porsches were again on the track and a Ferrari, that was somewhere hidden until now, appeared too. Unfortunately the brand new Porsche 996 GT3-RS model 2002 of Czech Sport Team NH Car didn't cover a single measured lap and had to be stopped. So its drivers Nimc and Dvorak had to go home early. The second Porsche of Slowak team Machanek Racing didn't run much well and was even slower than already mentioned BMW of Redhouse and Handkammer. Ferrari stayed behind Tampolli about 12 seconds.
The main race to four hours was started at Saturday evening by 5:20 a.m. Beside one missing Porsche there was also another Ford Puma that didn't take the grid but 25 cars at the start was still a reasonable number. After the start both Tampollis went to the lead and quickly drived away from the rest. The remaining Porsche and a single Ferrari started from the back of the grid and slowly made a progress forward. In the first lap local driver Petr Valek was in the lead closely followed by Italian Zardo. Both cars were showing fantastic battle until lap five, changed positions several times. However then the Italian car slowed down and in the lap 7 it was already in the pits. The car was delayed there for about 3 minutes and returned as 15th to the track. By that time the best touring car BMW of Redhouse/Handkammer was already retired after having went off the track in the lap two. Meanwhile Ferrari took the second position. The Porsche of Machanek during eighth lap finally overtook whole touring car field and ran third. However it had already been lapped by Valek in the leading Tampolli. Italians in Tampolli then improved every lap and running to the 16th lap they were third behind Ferrari. That was unfortunately everything that they showed that day because of a mechanical problem appeared again and the car didn't take it to the pitlane by own power this time.
Valek gave his car to his co-drivers with two lap margin over the second running Ferrari driven by Austrian trio Baron/Engelhorn/Volf. Kaufmann and Gsell then increased the margin to eight laps after four hours of the race. Ferrari lost its second position only for a while after very long pitstop in lap 35. But after 13 laps it returned to second again and never lost it since then. By that time a BMW M3 of Italians Commis and Lombrado was running second for a while but only until they went to pits for a driver change too. Their position was then taken by Machanek's Porsche for eight laps but it couldn't resist attack of much better driven Ferrari. Italian's BMW M3 was after driver change lapping considerably slower so his role behind quite dominating Tampolli and the two GT cars (Ferrari and Porsche) took the only Skoda Octavia in the field driven by Zbozinek/Dlouhy/Berger. Top four positions then remained unchanged, only differences between the top three were larger and larger. But in the dark, during which the race was finished, the fourth running Skoda Octavia was circulating considerably quicker than Porsche ahead of it. However, the margin of Porsche over Skoda from the first three hours of the race was large enough but in the finish Skoda was less than one lap behind the Porsche. That was excellent result for Skoda that also defeated whole BMW M3 armada and became the best touring car in the finish. Best of BMWs finished fifth and was driven by Commis and Lombardo followed by similar car from team Vonka Racing. Jan Vonka as a driver was entered with his own Porsche but he later decided to raced only for European Hillclimb Championship points at Rechberg. It is worth to mention also eighth place of Citroën Saxo VTS driven by Austrian drivers. Special Tatra retired early in lap 19 when lost rear wheel. For the same reason retired also the only Peugeot that raced with some success against BMWs. At the end 16 cars were classified from 18 finishers. Two of cars were delayed too much with repairs in the pits.