Report
First June weekend the Ecce Homo hill hosted another round of the European Hillclimb Championship and Racing Sports Cars was once again present at the action. Situation in the Championship continues in the similar way as reported last year, i.e. true sports cars of group CN are restricted very much, completely out of contention for the overall victory, while classes E1 (for racing cars) and E2 (for highly modified touring cars) are almost unlimited.
A problem of current development of the discipline was apparent already in the first race of the Czech National Hillclimb Championship, to which Ecce Homo was counted as well, one of the best drivers, Miroslav Fajkus, died in an accident during his first start with a very quick Formula 3000 car... Fortunately the Ecce Homo race passed without any further serious incidents despite the programme was delayed both days very much, mainly due to oil leaks on the track and a long work to make the track safe again.
Perhaps the main event during the weekend was a presence of currently fastest driver in the category, Lionel Regal, so far known mainly from national French hillclimb scene but known for very quick runs. He was here in the Czech Republic for the first time, partly due to his connections to our friends at www.vrchy.com but perhaps mainly because he is active outside his country much more then before. According to Regal's interview for vrchy.com he is going to take part in eight out of ten races of the European Hillclimb Championship, so he has some real chance to became a champion this year.
Another notable achievement this year in the championship is a fact thatleading sports car manufacturer in the category, Osella Corse Italia, decided to built an unrestricted sports prototype that would be eligible for the popular Group E1, hired on of the best hillclimb drivers around, Simone Faggioli and hopes to make a successful attack among the field mainly consisted of old or very old Formula 3000 and Formula Nippons.
Despite the factory Osella team suffered some troubles in the first race of the championship and failed to start and despite the car is still under development, it seems they are on the right way and apart from the famous Regal it seems there is no other driver able to beat the Osella PA27, as the new car is called, and Faggioli combination on a regular basis. So the heavier sports car, which main advantage is probably quicker ran through the corners and also the age of the car, is once again in contention for the overall win.
Another question of the weekend was whether the king of the hillclimbs, Lionel Regal, can beat a track record set by Vilarino at his first visit here or not. Regal was very quick during his practice sessions, there was no one comparable on performance level apart from the Vilarino, but in the end the track record was not broken despite Regal was very close to it on Sunday.
Pure sports car fans may have been happy with the Osella PA27 performance as Faggioli was usually second quickest driver in all session during the meeting and his second place overall in the race was quite deserved. Apart of that he easily broke current sports car record on the track, actually being the first driver in a sports prototype running the nice Ecce Homo track under three minutes.
There were many other Formula 3000 drivers, a lot of them former sports car drivers moving to almost vintage-aged racing cars just because of a bit stupid regulation helping to sell really old and otherwise unusable racing cars, some of them older than a decade. Nevěřil was classified fourth in five years old Lola, former Osella driver Bormolini was classified fifth in thirteen(!!!)-years old Reynard, another sports car veteran was Renzo Nappione was sixth in very old Reynard.
Local driver Milan Svoboda was best of Formula 3 (two-litre) drivers finishing the race eighth just ahead Lanfranco Evans, the best driver in a regular CN prototype. Another local driver David Kostruh completed the first ten in the second CN prototype, in fact in its two-litre incarnation while Evans drove heavily restricted three-litre version. The third in the pure sports car class was Lionel Champelovier in Norma M20, who was beaten by no less than four E1-classed touring car-based monsters achieving times that would hardly moved among top 10 in the sports car class a few years ago.
Generally the race was nice, drivers were competitive, the speeds were high, the weather was good as well, but we cannot deny our feelings that the once-famous discipline is noe getting more and more direction of just old, unusable and dangerous machinery storehouse rather then it was used to be famous for in the past - nice battle of contemporary sports cars, prototypes and GT cars. The only shining exception was the Osella achievement and let's hope its success will follow a stream of drivers buying such cars, and, in the better case, some more sports car manufacturers involved in. We cannot really see any production formula car builder to care to develop a car especially for climclimbs. Till they continue in this mode, they might be considered only a storage of something unwanted elsewhere. Let us hope for better tomorrows.
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