Christian Merli takes the 5th victory in Europe
Last Sunday saw the 71st edition of the Trento – Bondone hill climb, organised by the Scuderia Trentina in collaboration with Automobile Club Trento. It was the 5th round of the European championship and the 6th round of the Italian hill climb championship CIVM. Christian Merli took the fifth consecutive victory in the European Hill Climb Championship and was second overall at the finish line in Vason with his Osella FA 30 Judd LRM bearing the competition number 5.
From Montevideo to Vason
Along the 17.300 km track, which has an altitude difference of 1350 m, there are 42 hairpins and more than 180 bends. The race is unique in Europe, and it is a tough test both for the cars and for the drivers’ physical stamina. A hill climb race where managing the tyres, the engine and the brakes demands the utmost attention.
Christian’s comments
“I’m taking 25 points home, which is great. It’s now a classic. We struggle here, and in the last section I didn’t have any brakes left and the tyres were overheating. I was sliding a lot coming out of the hairpins. My prime objective was to win the European classification, and I did. It was important to bag points for the overall ranking. Of course racing at home is always a great motivation. To be honest, achieving a time of 9’04” like Faggioli is impossible with the package I have. We’ve learned that we cannot be faster than 9’19”. We’ve done everything we could, but we had to make do without the second practice run where we were going to make a few changes and where I wanted to test a new set of tyres. So I opted for a conservative solution. But I hope that a way can be found to carry out all practice runs as planned. My respect goes to my opponent; we struggle a lot when accelerating out of hairpins, and there are no fewer than 42 of those here.”
The European Hill Climb Championship calendar
31 July: 13th Hill Climb Limanowa (Poland), 21 August: 77th Course de Côte de Saint Ursanne (Switzerland), 4 September: 28th GHD Ilirska Bistrica (Slovenia), 18 September: 41st Buzetski Dani (Croatia).
Ruth Scheithauer