All track records broken by Simone Faggioli
Traditional Ecce Homo hill climb race was again part of the European Hillclimb Championship and we at Racing Sports Cars were again back to bring you this one off report from the championship, which used to be famous and hosted a lot of World Sports Car Championship drivers and cars. Now the situation for the sports cars in the series does not look great with only very few pure sports car entries.
Along with the EHC there was also a race for historic cars. In it we had three Formula 2 cars and two spiders. Alfred Stoitzner with a Lola T497 was actually slower than old good 1300 cc cars from the communist era of the Czech Republic - Skoda 130 RS and MTX 1-03 Formula Easter. The other prototype was Luigi Bormolini with his Osella PA9, which he raced here already during the 1980s and which was originally entered in the C3 class among modern cars.
Unlike in Austria Bormolini managed to convince scruteneers that it is in fact a vintage car. However he still did not win because Petr Vondrák in March 752 in original Warsteiner colours was more then 6 seconds quicker in each of the heats.
After Bormolini with his Osella was moved to the historic car class and three of five entered sports cars did not arrive, the former popular Group CN was left with only two cars in the race. Ligier JS49 was to make its debut in Ecce Homo but Martin Novotný crashed it a week before in Ústí nad Orlicí hillclimb. The remaining two cars were fighting mainly for the point tot the Czech Championship, we were not even able to get confirmed whether they were even entered for the European points as well.
Both car ran in a decent distance from the top cars. David Kostruh with his two-litre Norma M20 was quicker of the two but his way to the win was quite open after Peter Vítek crashed his Osella in the first heat. Despite easily winning his group Kostruh was not able to break into top ten.
Another trend that was obvious is that the former official FIA Groups A and N are in continuous decline while most of the touring car field was formed by much less restricted Group E1. Almost everything with a roof could have been classified into this class, so we could see specials like silhouette car from the late 1970s, some really vintage cars, which were built almost fourty years ago, very powerful former Group B rallye Lancia Delta Integrale or the DTM Audi TT specially built for Milan Kašpárek. He was fastest in practice but in the end the winner was the Lancia drive Felix Pailer.
Unfortunately, probably the most impressive car of entire E1 field BMW 320 with an IRL engine driven by Erich Edlinger was not able to finish at least its first heat. A few curves later after having run around us the car got a fire and its rear half was completely burn out.
With a complete decline of the Group CN the biggest attraction was now well established Group E1, which is based on former FIA Group E and D but similarly as E2 has much more liberal rules. So Enzo Osella brought his newly built special FA30 based on experiance with PA27 spider last year, but Simone Faggioli in it and so far Faggioli is breaking records on every track the team decides to contest. The question here, even a long time before the race, was not who would win but rather what value of the new track record would be. Even a guessing competition was proposed.
The most important question was whether it would rain or not. Despite the weather forecast was really bad and during the Saturday practice sesssions it was very cold and at times there were even some hints of rain, in the end the track was dry during the entire practice and Faggioli was already very fast setting the third quickest time in the history of the Ecce Homo track becoming by far the quickest driver in a practice.
During Sunday morning there was no rain but the track was still very wet after the rainfall during the night. As the sun shined since the morning the track started to dry quickly during the first heat, where historic cars along with the Groups N and SP (not sports-prototypes, but super-production). But the track was still wet in shadowed parts under the trees. While most of the drivers covered the first heat without problem, one of the last drivers on the track spun in one such wet quick corner, visited bariers several times, ending up in a tree. The safety fence was completely destroyed, the car of course as well, so the organisers had to stop the race for a long time. Originally they just fixed it to allow remaining two drivers of the first group complete their heat but then a long unplanned brake followed befoíre the second group could take the start to allow workers to rebuild it completely.
The Sunday programme started at 9 AM, consisted of two heats, each of two groups but it was already 14 PM when the second quarter of the race started. By that time the track was already dry, it was partly cloudy but the sun shined for most of the time and it was actually much warmer than the day before. So everything was set for Faggioli to break the record. While he was already in practice very close to the current record 2:53.96 set by Ander Vilarino in 2005, in the first heat Faggioli was almost 4 seconds quicker. In the second heat he was even slightly quicker and was the first driver to cover the Ecce Homo hill under 2:50, exactly in 2:49.990. Thus Faggioli also easily broke a record for two-heat total with time 5:40.570 (formerly kept by Regal at 5:49.110 from the last year). No other driver was able to run under 3 minutes during the weekend. Though Fausto Bormolini, second overall was actually pretty close with his nice time 3:00.000 in the second heat. He drove Reynard 95D. It is a Formula 3000 classed in group E1 similarly as all other cars in the top 10 behind phenomenal Faggioli and the new Osella, a combination that is really the fastest thing that ever appeared in international hillclimb racing, no doubt about it.
It was a shame that the last year winner and the main opponent of Faggioli, Lionel Régal, actually did not arrive. He was already mentioned in the race programme as a possible entry but in the end Régal, the European Hillclimb Championship from 2008, decided to stay at home, apparently due to the current economic situation. But generally the field was quite full with 106 car present, one failed to pass scrutineering, 101 started the race, of which 88 were classified.
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