Hill climb: The champions warm up 🎥

In Vincent Abbet's film, released this week, the three strongest Swiss protagonists look at Eric Berguerand, Joël Volluz and Marcel Steiner on the upcoming season. Berguerand presents in French the eight hillclimb races of the Swiss championship from the perspective of the cockpits of his Lola FA99, Steiner's LobArt-Mugen and Volluz's Osella FA30.

His colleague Volluz from the Valais briefly looks back on the serious accident at Les Rangiers in 2016 and gives an insight into the reconstruction of his Osella, with which he already fought for the day's victory again at the last hill climb in Les Paccots in 2018. He plans to do the same this year, as does Steiner, who presents his season plans at the end of the film.

Start of the season for Volluz and Bratschi in France
For them and other Swiss, the hillclimb season already starts on the coming weekend and/or the weekend after next. At the French mountain championship race Abreschviller-Saint-Quirin in the Lorraine department, where cold and wet weather is forecast, Joël Volluz will warm up and is a clear contender for the overall podium.

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Also Ronnie Bratschi starts in Abreschviller as in the previous year with his Mitsubishi, whose front fenders he has now widened somewhat in accordance with the Swiss E1 regulations. In the joint E1 group according to FIA and national regulations with Luxemburgers and Germans, seven more Swiss drivers from French-speaking Switzerland will start.

As already reported drives Frédéric Neff with his Porsche GT3 R more often this year in France, where he is allowed to score points in the GTTS group of GT and special touring cars. For this reason, too, he will skip one or the other Swiss race and will hardly be able to successfully defend the touring car mountain championship title.

Bouduban and Meisel in Austria
At the more distant Rechbergrennen in Styria, the race is on for Fabien Bouduban for the second time after Col St-Pierre (F) for points towards the European Mountain Championship. As in 2018, the Jura native will be driving a three-liter Norma sports car in the team of multiple European champion Simone Faggioli. The Austrian Mountain Grand Prix also features Reto Meisel with his Mercedes SLK340 in the group E2-SH on the 263 (!) names on the starting list.

First meeting in Luxembourg
The participation of the Swiss hill specialists will then be really strong on the weekend of May 4/5 at the 31st European Hill Race in Eschdorf. At the only hill race of Luxembourg take mountain champion Marcel Steiner, Eric Berguerand and Robin Faustini tackle their season. With French mountain champion and last year's winner Sébastien Petit and German-Slovenian Patrik Zajelsnik (both (Norma-Mugen V8) and Luxembourg's Guy Demuth (Norma-Judd), Steiner has three powerful opponents in the sports cars.

Together with the race car drivers Berguerand and Volluz, they will settle the day's victory among themselves. Whether Faustini is already capable of this at the start of his second season with the Reynard-Mugen Nippon remains to be seen. Michel Zemp makes his debut in Eschdorf with the Norma Honda (ex Hunziker), which he tried out for the first time this week at the Anneau du Rhin.

With Ronnie Bratschi, Thomas Kessler and Romeo Nüssli three of the fastest Swiss touring car drivers will also be competing in Group E1 in Eschdorf. Due to time constraints, only FIA gold medal winner Roger Schnellmann not to warm up properly with his Mitsubishi monster before the start of the Swiss championship on June 15/16 in Hemberg. Whether that is a disadvantage remains to be seen.

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