Sports Car Challenge - Race 1 (Saturday 30th April)
Traditional meeting at Brno, called Jarní cena Brna (Spring Prize of Brno) was held the first May day under very good weather and track condition. It was sunny whole weekend but interesting set of races attracted only very low number of spectators. Pedrazza's Sports Car Challenge 2005 was the most interesting event of the meeting. This series split their forces with Interserie after only a single year of co-operation. However single seaters were still accepted by Pedrazza's Euroserie organisation. Six of them appeared in the field of 23 cars that took part in qualifying session on Saturday. Two F3000 cars of Interserie drivers Milavec and Wagner were stars of the race. Both starting from the first row dominated the field quite easily. Although they ran almost head to head throughout the race and the difference in the finish was only 0.5 seconds, Milavec lead whole race after he set pole position. First place among sportscars and third overall in practice and for whole 10-lap race was kept by local Czech driver Michal Dolák, overall winner of Proto CUP 2004 series that was organized by server vrchy.com as an national sportscar series last year. In the 4th lap Dolak ran even quicker than both Milavec and Wagner and it looked he could fight with them during the second half of the race but a lap later he lost four seconds and then only maintained his position ahead of Wolfgang Payr and Emmanuel Pedrazza. All these top 3 sportscar drivers ran on various types of PRC in Division 1. Sixth position in the finish went to British driver Tony Sinclair in very nice looking and sounding car Jade-Nissan followed by winner of two litre sportscar division "Tessitore".
While majority of the field was made up by various types of PRC, there were a few cars present that didn't make the grid but are worth to mention. The first one is Osella entered by Arnold Wagner, the F3000 driver. The car never turned a wheel during the weekend. The other was former Renauer's Tampolli SR2 entered by Burkhard Stricker, successful 2004 SCC driver in 2-litre division. He set only 8th time in qualifying for the first race but then crashed rather heavily at the end of the session. So he had to pack the car and went home. Damages were serious but we hope the car would be rebuilt for later season races as we expected it to run also in Endurance Interserie Championship. Another special that appeared on the track was a car originally designed and built by Czech driver Jaroslav Vorel, now driven by Thomas Volfert and called Sharon GT Alfa Romeo. It made only two slow laps in qualifying practice and than retired after only two laps in the race keeping only one very slow Formula Ford Vector MG93 driven by Roman Klemm behind.
Sports Car Challenge - Race 2 (Sunday 1st May)
Sunday's race had separate qualifying session in which Milavec also beat Wagner but more notably fastest sportscar driver Dolák didn't set any time after running only one slow lap started from pits, so had to start from the back of the grid. Just after the green light Wagner passed Milavec and took the lead. Dolák quickly overtook two litre category cars and ran seventh at the end of his first lap. A lap later top five sportscars ran all together and it was rather exciting to see their very close battle. Dolák was already fourth overall. Wagner was in this second SCC race noticeably quicker than Milavec and almost easily won it. Milavec kept second place without any problems. Dolák ran third overall since the lap 3 but in lap 6 he had problems with shifting of highest gear. Since then he was losing time on straights without the gear. But his lead over other sportscar drivers was big enough, so he finished third overall despite that gearbox problem. Gerd Beisel, running fourth most of the race, had collision with Tony Sinclair's green Jade in the final lap so they yielded their positions to Emmanuel Pedrazza and Wolfgang Payr. "Tessitore" once again won two-litre division after being led by Bernd ruebig during the first half of the race.
Czech National Championship - Division 4 Endurance (Saturday 30th April)
Opening race of Czech National Championship brought more Porsche 996 GT3s to the grid then last year but main and only favourite remains the same: Charouz's Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM driven this time by Antonín Charouz, Jaroslav Páral and Jaroslas Janiš. They were by almost by 9 seconds quicker than the best Porsche driven by well known Wolfgang Kaufmann in Renauer's team. However Janiš failed to make the grid in time and had to start from the pitlane along with other four or five cars. We hoped the race would be more interesting at least in the first part of the race but Janiš was very very quick and already in the first lap he overtook 23 cars and ran 18th overall. One of Renauer's and Machánek's Porsches were fighting for the lead while Janiš apeared a few second behind them while going into the 5th lap. It took less then 10 minutes into the race when Mercedes appeared in the lead. Renauer's Porsche driven by Kaufmann/Jurasz and local matador Válek kept the second place until first series of pitstops. The Porsche was lapped during its 20th race lap. After the pitstops Studenic/Venc in Machanek's Porsche, which is entered into this year's FIA GT Championship, took the second place and kept it until the end of the three hour race. After Mercedes' driver changes the car ran a little slower and Machanek's Porsche even unlapped itself in the last hour, it was still quite clear than only technical reasons or accident could stop the Mercedes crew to win the race. Porsche then took places from second to seventh ahead of best BMW M3 GTR driven by Kačírek and Kusín, that was also one of cars starting from the pitlane. The top 10 in largest division was completed by remaining two Porsches in the race from Austria. Those were in Cup configuration but still were much quicker than most of the field that was formed mainly by touring cars like Alfa Romeos, Ford Puma, Seat Leo, Renault Clio, Ford Focus and Fiesta, Opel Astra, Škoda Fabia, Citroën Saxo and similar cars. There was one domestic special in the race that we got used to see regularly in the series and it is Tatra Ecorra, a purpose built special reminding old Tatra 613 built in Kopřivnice since early 70s. This was the largest and most unusual car in the field of 41 cars. Hajdusek family kept 10th place during first half of the race among slower Cup Porsches but after problems to restart engine after one of the pitstops they lost about 10 minutes and a lot of positions. Their chasing run in the last hour brought them back to 13th place in the over 2-litre division ahead three BMW M3s and 16th position overall. Another cars that are worth our attention were two litre class winner Audi A4 driven by Maderyč/Rosina, Jr. (10th overall) and Polish VW Beetle with wing at the back that finished 14th after regular and reliable run.
Czech National Championship - Division 4 Sprint (Sunday 1st May)
Following 3-hour endurance race, there were two Division 4 sprints scheduled on Sunday afternoon. One for cars under 1600 cc, the other for cars over 1600 cc. Unlike last year the entry for over 1600 cc race was much worse than in the endurance race. Two quick Renauer's Porsche were packed and went home as well as another two Austrian Porsches. Missing on the grid there was also Autoracing Club Bratislava's GT3-R but it was replaced by team's former Zwaan's Viper driven by Slowakian driver Mirko Konopka, who is known internationally due to his starts with Jan Vonka in FIA GT Championship. His Chrysler Viper chassis number C14 was raced in the FIA GT Championship last two seasons after very successful 2002 season in Swedish National GT Championship (GTR). His gearbox had failed during practice sessions, so he had to go abroad for a new one. In was repaired in time, so Konopka with his yellow Viper appeared in warm up, where he was second quickest behind Charouz, and then at back of the grid. Konopka's chasing drive made the 13-lap sprint race more interesting. Charouz in his DTM machine was of course far ahead everybody else but Konopka tried to catch the rest. During his first lap he overtook 21 cars and ran tenth. Then he was fourth in lap 2 and third in lap 3, having already passed two slower 996s, two Audis A4 that dominated 2000 class easily and another new car that appeared only in the sprint. It was BMW M3 GTR driven by Robert Šenkýř. It was quickest BMW that appeared on the track during the weekend but since the car isn't quite ready and well tested the driver decided not to run endurance race yet. Konopka then began to close gap between him and second running Studenic in one of Machánek's team Porsches. With a former GT car it wasn't such difficult task against former N-GT car and Studenic was catched and passed by lap 6. After that nothing has changed within top 12 positions, only Charouz started to lap some of those cars in the second half of the race. Only 7 cars out of 31 finished in the same lap as Charouz, which is rather low number considering the race was only 13 laps long and Charouz is several seconds per lap slower than his younger driver Jaroslav Janiš and needn't to run at full throttle. In the finish Charouz also decided a battle between seventh running Rudolf Machánek (Porsche) and Robert Šenkýř (BMW), who was pushing very hard at the end of the race, catched Machánek and it seemed he would overtook him soon. But Šenkýř was lapped by Charouz before the finish line while Machánek was a few centimetres ahead Mercedes, and thus could slowly finish his last lap without being attacked by the BMW or anybody else.
Generally the race of division 4 was good but it would be much better if all opposition of AMG Mercedes wouldn't be regularly eliminated by rule changes or questionable explanations of technical regulations. Several quick prototypes as well as Saleen S7, cars that had beaten the Mercedes in the past, could be still there and races could attrack much more spectators and media without that rule games.
Other races
There were also some other support races, such is National Formula or Austrian Touring Cars up to two litres but we thought by far the best of them was a vintage race for cars built from mid 60s until early 90s. Almost everything was allowed to enter, so we could see not only almost modern Posche 964 and BMW M3, or Shelby Cobra and Jörg's Corvette known from his starts in STT, or many 70s and 60s touring cars (various Afa Romeos, BMW CSL and 2002, Escorts, Capris etc.) but also Porsche 908/02 Spyder driven here (rather slowly) by former Interserie driver Ing. August Deutsch. The car wore racing number 48, same as Steve McQueen's car at Sebring 1970 and announcer claimed that this is actually the same chassis that McQueen brought second to the finish 35 years ago.
Both Histo Cup Austria races were dominated by two Porsches 964 followed by yellow Porsche 914/6 with a large rear wing and a pack of other very interesting cars. August Deutsch finished both races, in positions 26th and 22nd, in his class for cars built before 1971 he finished 2nd in the first race and won the second race. It's worth to note that there were over 50 cars on the grid.
