After one year since our premiere in Austrian Rechberg we are back here to bring you original report from the traditional meeting, which is part of the European Hill Climb Championship. For this season, European Champion from the past few seasons Simone Faggioli replaced his winning Osella FA30 with a new Norma to take a new challenge. In the first race of this season, which was held in France, he proved that he can be as quick as the last year and he even broken track record. Unfortunately there are no quick replacement drivers in the Osella team and in fact, only two Osellas of the PA30/FA30 fame are present here. Just one of them is quick enough, Czech driver Miloš Beneš at the wheel of FA30.
The Rechberg Hill Climb race was not only part of the FIA European Hill Climb Championship but was counted also towards the Austrian Czech National Championship, Czech International Championship, Slovakian Championship and of course, Austrian Hill Climb Championship. Apart from this main International Rechberg Race there was also completely separate classification for Historic Race, which consisted also of several championship for historic cars: FIA EBM/EHC, FIA CEZ/Zone and three national championships, just like for modern cars: Austrian, Czech and Slovak Championships.
Among the historic cars, we has some interesting machinery, a lot of Porsche 911, Formula 2, Audi Quattro Group B silhouette, many Group 2 touring cars and especially three spiders from late 80s/early 90s - two Osellas and a single PRC. It was Stefano Di Fulvio, who completely dominated this class in one of the Osellas (tipo PA9/90) who was already in practice by 20 seconds quicker than the next car, Audi Group B driven by Harald Neuherz. While Di Fulvio would easily place among the top 10 among the modern cars, and was completely outstanding within his class, the rest of the field was well matched and the differences were small - less than 7 seconds between 2nd and 10th car.
Modern cars started with rather slow times, despite it was dry in the first practice on Saturday. Simone Faggioli in his new Norma was at the top with 2:06, followed by Fausto Bormolini (Reynard F3000) and Miloš Beneš (Osella FA30, running among formula cars as the seat in FA30 is, unlike in PA30, located central). Both were in 2:09s. Hermann Waldy, who is traditionally very quick in his home race set 2:10. Faggioli was leading the prototype (two-seater/CN) section. Dušan Nevěřil (also 3-litre Norma N20 FC) and Omar Magliona (2-litre Osella PA21 Evo) were the only other really quick prototypes in the field despite there were a lot of spiders of various design, age and make. Unfortunately the modern closed prototype called Tork BRS to be driven by Wolfgang Terschl did not take part in the event. In the results it was listed as Did Not Practice, which suggests its presence in the paddock, but we have never seen it anywhere. The car reminds modern LMP1 with full width rear wing, but with no holes over the wheels, ugly fin or too vertical front panels as current Toyota or even Porsche do have.
The touring car category had four very quick cars: Lancia Delta Integrale Group B of Felix Pailer, who unlike Audi Quattro runs in modern E1 OSK group, two Porsches 911 GT2 with a huge rear wings, driven by Herbert Pregartner (E2 SH class) and Rupert Schwaiger and surprisingly VW Gold Rally of Karl Schagerl - latter two running in the same class as the Lancia. The Golf was almost unnoticeable, until we registered it very, very high in the results in the second practice. It was held in the wet, several cars skipped the session but the Golf was classified fifth overall less than 2 second behind fastest Felix Pailer. Magliona and Nevěřil completed the virtual podium of this session, which appeared not to be important since it stopped raining and the rest of the weekend was dry, despite some pessimistic weather forecasts.
Session 3 was back to normal: Faggioli, Beneš, Waldy and Bormolini in top 3. Next two spiders behind Faggioli's Norma were only 7th (Magliona) and 8th (Nevěřil). Apart from those, there was no prototype among top twenty (except the historic Osella PA9/90, which was only slightly slower than Nevěřil). Touring cars had Porsche, Golf and surprisingly Mitsubishi of Marek Rybníček at the top.
For the race day were left for Sports Car Challenge in Brno so all photos are actually from practices on Saturday. Altogether three practice sessions were help, followed by two race heats on Sunday. Stefano Di Fulvio continued to dominate the historic race by around 20 seconds per heat. Harald Neuherz in the Audi Quattro was second and Miloš Zmeškal in formula Ralt RT32 was third. All of them confirmed their practice positions. However it was Edmont Guistatini in Chevron B48 Formula 2 who actually set second fastest time among the historic during the weekend. In his second race heat he managed to run under 2:30 and by more than 3 seconds he beat the Audi. But after bad first heat time, Guistatini was outside of the battle for the historic podium.
The international (modern cars) race was as expected won by Simone Faggioli, both heats at 1:55's and new track record. He was easily not only his CN/E2-SC class (margin more than half a minute in total) but also the race without class/group recognition. It was strange that while Faggioli beaten his own record, all other drivers were notably slower than in the last years and no one else actually ran better than 2:03.xx. In any case, those were the cars from the Group D/E2-SS (single seater) that took the honours behind Faggioli. While Beneš and Valdy unfortunately retired in their second heats but still E2-SS were in the next four positions: three Reynards of Fausto Bormolini, Federico Liber and Otakar Krámský and a Lola of Václav Janík. The sixth position belonged to Magliona's Osella in CN/E2-SC (sports car) class. Unofficially seventh overall was the historic race winner Di Fulvio, who was actually third fastest among prototypes. Even Dušan Nevěřil was behind him. Porsche of Schwaiger became fastest of the touring/closed cars, closely followed by Pailer's Lancia and Rybníček's Mitsubishi. But the VW Golf Rallye was faster than all these in its better heat but lost in the other to finish as fourth touring/closed car. However the fastest time set by a touring was achieved by yet to be mentioned BMW 320 IRL in hands of Erich Edlinger. Unfortunately he did retire in the second heat, as did the other Porsche.
