European Hillclimb 2013

[Lousada]

I do a small bit of hillclimbing in the UK and I'm amazed by watching videos of hillclimbing on the continent (particularly the German/Swiss rounds). We simply can't have anything like that over here, we generally rely on venues being on the driveway of large houses. Also the cars are amazing compared to what we have. Take that St Ursanne video above, all the cars are well modified and there don't seem to be any 'shopping trollies'. Over here in the UK it's quite common for people to enter a hillclimb in the same car that they drive to work. At the higher level there are obviously well prepared (and expensive) single seaters, but the majority of the field is made up from people in road cars.

Here's a video of me at a venue that is no longer used Most people would go up in under 30 seconds, the fast single seaters could do it under 21secs.

I hope that one day I'll visit one of the Swiss or German climbs and see what it's like in Europe, although I keep spending all my money entering instead.

Hey nice post! Sorry I missed it the first time round. The British hills look absolutely crazy to me. Although they are short, they are often quite technical and the cars are absolutely crazy. The lack of safety does worry me a little bit though, I have seen onboards of cars without a rollcage
Nice driving, what kind of car do you drive? Is that a Caterham?? At least it has a rollcage (I think?)

[Lousada]

The start of the season has been delayed a little bit because of the snow in central Europe. Both the opening of the Czech Championship and the second Bergrallye have been cancelled because of the weather.

I hope this thread might gain a little more traction as the season is now really going to start. This weekend the Bulgarian Championship begins, but what is more interesting is the start of the French Championship in Bagnols Sabran.
160+ cars entered in the modern race, the entrylist can be found here.
The details of the track can be found on my website here.
In my best of English I have attempted to write a preview of the French Championship indicating all the news and such. You can find it on my website in the newsposts.

Then, next week is already the second round in France. This also counts as the first round of the European Championship.
There is already an entrylist out, you can find it here
The details of the track can be found on my website here.
I will preview this race next week if anyone is interested (so far not many people are )
It is interesting to see how the championship appears to center itself around Group N Lancers and Osella FA30's with the occasional Osella PA30.

Next week I will not be in St-Jean-du-Gard but rather the first round of the Belgian Championship in Vencimont. Finally I can take some pictures with my new camera equipment

[MrJan]

Thanks Lousada. The car I was driving is a Locost, which is just a cheap version of a Caterham. Because it was originally a circuit car it had a full rollcage. However its now been sold and replaced with a Westfield that only has a roll hoop. In the road going class you don't need a cage but, as you go through the classes you have to have more safety equipment. Thankfully its quite rare for cars to end up on their roof, I've only see it happen 4 or 5 times and each of those its been a car with a cage. Remember that the technical nature of our hills means that speeds for road cars are reasonably low.

Got my first event of the season on Sunday, a sprint that's run on a go kart track (where Jenson Button used to race) will be a good chance to get to know the new car and hopefully I'll get some videos.

[vino_93]

It will be nice to see what will do Cn+ against F3000 for the first round of the championship

[MrJan]

Well that could have gone better. First off I took the bracket to fix the camera but forgot to take the camera, so no video. Secondly it took quite some getting used to being in a new car, I had a lot of trouble with gear changes and the brakes locking surprisingly easy. Then my times weren't that much better than they were in the old car (although I was running close to others in my class). To cap it all off I went into my last run hoping to go quite a bit faster but when I got to the second corner something went clang and I lost all drive. Turns out that the output shaft from the diff has sheered off on the universal joint (it's a live rear axle) so I'm now trying to contact Westfield direct to see if it's something we can get hold of. All in all not the best start to having a new car (especially as the old car completed every single event we entered in it, which is probably around 50).

[Lousada]

Last Sunday was the season opener in Belgium. Luckily it was the first day of nice weather, 26 degrees I think!

For the event it was a little sad that some very good drivers like Emmanuel Gonay and Gaëtan Hayot were absent. On top of that, in the first practise session Jelle de Coninck crashed and was out for the rest of the day... Three Normas made up the podium, Marchal, Hubert and Perez. Best touringcar driver was surprisingly Eric Schwilen in the little Peugeot 205. Full results as usual on my website...

It was the first time I got to use my new camera in action. Still a bit of hit and miss I suppose.






Rest can be found at www.hillclimbportal.com

[Lousada]

In other news Simone Faggioli won the European Championship opener in France. French drivers Sébastien Petit and Nicolas Schatz were very close, and young guns David Hauser and Joël Volluz are getting faster and faster. But Faggioli can defeat them all, and he even defeats himself as he broke his own trackrecord... The championship continues in two weeks with the Rechbergrennen in Austria.

[Jarek Z]

Hey guys, nice topic!

Here in Poland hillclimbing is quite popular. Of course not as popular as classic rallying, but there is some following among the craziest motorsport fans. Races are most often held in the mountain region of southern Poland, very often on old rally stages. Drivers often come from classic track racing or rallying. For example a common situation is that a rally driver who can't afford rallying switches to hillclimb for a while. When he manages to find good sponsors he returns to rallying. That happened to Stec and Malyszczycki:



Pawel Dytko or Marcin Beltowski:



What I don't like about hillclimb is the crazy complicated points scoring system, multiple classes and ununderstandable regulations. What I like about it is the variety of cars. You can see almost everything here, from racing to rallying, from historic cars to modern machines, even something like that:



or that:



not just Peugeots and Lancers, like in rallying.

I'd like to show you some of my photo galleries from Sienna and Rosciszow. They are both organized on former stages of Rally Poland:

=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=2448]Sienna 2007
=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=3318]Sienna 2008
=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=2501]Rosciszow 2007

[br21]

I'm also interested in Hillclimbing, little bit involved also, but from enginering/mechanical side, not as a driver.
I have no time to write here a lot, but I'm trying to follow all post by Lousada and other users.

[Lousada]

Hey guys, nice topic!

Here in Poland hillclimbing is quite popular. Of course not as popular as classic rallying, but there is some following among the craziest motorsport fans. Races are most often held in the mountain region of southern Poland, very often on old rally stages. Drivers often come from classic track racing or rallying. For example a common situation is that a rally driver who can't afford rallying switches to hillclimb for a while. When he manages to find good sponsors he returns to rallying. That happened to Stec and Malyszczycki:

Pawel Dytko or Marcin Beltowski:

What I don't like about hillclimb is the crazy complicated points scoring system, multiple classes and ununderstandable regulations. What I like about it is the variety of cars. You can see almost everything here, from racing to rallying, from historic cars to modern machines, even something like that:

or that:

not just Peugeots and Lancers, like in rallying.

I'd like to show you some of my photo galleries from Sienna and Rosciszow. They are both organized on former stages of Rally Poland:

=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=2448]Sienna 2007
=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=3318]Sienna 2008
=+DESC&modex=pokaz&T[id]=2501]Rosciszow 2007

Hey, thanks for contributing and interesting pictures you have there! From what I can see the Polish Hillclimbing has quite a high level nowadays is it not? Always a lot of drivers, quite nice looking cars. Surely the Slovakian drivers always have trouble keeping up in your joint-rounds. Even Martin Kois in the unlimited Fiesta couldn't cut it against your OPEN-class Lancers.
For the first time (I think?) you will have a European Cup round this year in Limanowa. Then we will see perhaps how good the Polish drivers are really when they have to fight the Czechs and others? I would not be surprised if Limanowa is promoted to the European Championship next year.