This year Ecce Homo, the European Hill Climb Championship race, was exceptional from several points of view. First of all, the number of cars exceeded two hundreds, which happened never before. Thus the traditional 1-minute intervals from the past were shortened even more, to only 35 seconds, which is at the limit of 7800 meters long track, which is not easy to cover in less than three minutes.
General competition was arguably also the best of all time. Especially the number of sports prototypes was huge - maybe over 30, counting historic cars as well. Both favourites for the overall title were present as well: Simone Faggioli and Christian Merli.
Already Saturday's practice sessions brought a bug fight between those two. Merli in his Osella ran first (as he competed among single-seater with his sports car center seated FA30 car) and for the first time in modern history beat the absolute track record, lowering it by almost two seconds (2:44.15). Faggioli, trying to answer this excellent performance of Merli, did a mistake and spun during his second practice heat. When recovered, he was still running very strongly, not influenced by this unfortunate delay, but obviously his time said nothing about his real performance.
For the main race on Sunday, the weather forecast was not really optimistic for the afternoon, so every delay was unwelcomed much more than usually. During morning racing heat, Merli was not able to achieve his time from Saturday, but was still very quick (2:45.30), however Faggioli made no mistake now and manage to run the track at the best ever time in its history. He improved the Merli's record by almost another second: 2:43.37.
Afternoon heats started again with the historic cars and were still run under regular dry conditions. Uberto Bonucii with his almost modern sounding and looking Osella PA9/90 let nobody to doubt about his victory and with another time at 3:14 beaten almost entire field by more than a half-minute. Only Adam Klus with his ex-Adámek Interserie March HSB Audi Turbo Can-Am, could keep some 10-12 seconds per heat behind the winner. Very attractive car was brought his by former EHC Champion Jean-Marie Almeras but continuous problems with the engine in his Porsche 935J prevented him from completing more than one of the two runs he actually started (out of four over the weekend), so spectators could not enjoy this great Group 5 silhouette as one would wish.
Modern cars also started their second heat on dry conditions but then a first rainstorm arrived. It caused nearly two-hour break in the programme, during which it was being decided whether the race would continue at all. Special touring cars (groups E1 and E2-SH) and GT cars run first. Followed by single-seaters (E2-SS).
The track was drying and since Christian Merli ran among Single-Seaters, it was expected that it would play into the card of Simone Faggioli, as he would have the track almost dried out. However local fastest driver Miloš Beneš, running one of 3 present single-seater FA30s, had a collision with the barriers and the programme was stopped again. Merli scheduled to run only two cars later, could not do better than 3:08. So it looked good for Faggioli... only before the next rainstorm was coming... It started with a light rain and drivers were not sure what to do, many of them prepared on the start line on dry slicks... the order of them was not really kept...
Faggioli was the last one as scheduled. It was really rather wet and he looked to have a very small chance of winning overall, maybe his class. When he covered half a distance, he was still 2 seconds ahead of Merli, but there was really a huge rain at the first third of the track that hardly allowed run faster than 60 kph. It was only a question whether Faggioli reaches the finish line earlier than the huge rainstorm would reach him... nobody knew, until commentator sadly sad that Faggioli won the race by 0.2 seconds ahead of Merli. ‘Sadly’ not because the first two positions were not deserved, but because the weather really spoilt the race, which had all preconditions to be the best and fastest one of all time.
The other positions (third Paride Macario) were more a less a lottery. Dan Michl with his closed car running among silhouettes was 5th overall which speaks itself. Best historic would be 9th overall, had there officially been overall joint classification. A great driver Sebastien Petit from France, who was third fastest in heat one (2:49) had a bad luck in the rain and dropped down to only 8th overall.
Some eventful photos:
left: This historic NSU stopped near our station but the race was not stopped until later, when another car further up the track stopped in more dangerous position and cause a red flag.
right: Once the race was terminated because of a suffering spectator. The same place and heat as the NSU ended its way up the hill.
left: This Osella caught a fire. Nobody could stop it, the driver was not aware of the smoke and when it was leaving our station, the fire and soon end of the car was obvious. It is from the second practice as the other two photos above, and it never appeared on the track again.
right: The end of Almeras 935 which passed us in suspiciously peaceful speed to parked the next second. It was a great look at it after the dust disappeared, reminding DRM photos of the 1977-1981 era, before it was hidden by a bunch of other retired cars. Maybe 5 or 6 of them.
left: At the end of the race, it started to rain, while most drivers were on dry slicks. For this car I was a bit late with taking a photo, when it started to slide into the barrier - so I just got the crash - well, the two photographers 'improved' the photo a little, I was complaining to the spectators next to me, interested in it.
right: The very last car on the track, in the dark and rather slippery track. A few moments later, a heavy rain came down but Faggioli had a good luck in a bad luck and was not caught by water so much. So he could actually win by 0.2 seconds, mainly thanks to his excellent, record packed first heat.
