Marcel Steiner: "It's my own fault" 🎥

The onboard video provided exclusively to AutoSprintCH by Marcel Steiner shows his record drive on September 22 at the Esthofen-St. Agatha International Hill Climb. He explains the shaking of his head after crossing the finish line with the fact that he had expected a greater increase after a training best time of 1'03.3 with new tires. 

The verdict would still have been clear. The fastest man in Upper Austria was Marcel Steiner. While Patrik Zajelsnik was still 36 thousandths ahead of him after training, the Swiss turned the tables on race day in beautiful late summer weather and inflicted a clear defeat on his nemesis - only this does not go into the statistics.

As fast as no Swiss has ever been
With 1'03.087, the Bernese covered the 3200-meter track in his LobArt-Mugen in the first race run almost a second faster than the German-Slovenian in the Norma-Mugen. With only two runs to go, Christoph Lampert in the Osella FA30 was already as good as beaten as third and fastest race car driver with 1'04.875.

Five weeks after his Swiss record run at the European Championship in the Jura (178.345 km/h average), Steiner thus achieved an even higher average speed. This now stands at an incredible 182.604 km/h! No sports car driver has ever been this fast on the Austrian speedway. And only European champion Christina Merli was even faster at the St. Agatha finish line two years ago with two 1'02 times in the Osella FA30.

The expected tit-for-tat
In the second run, this year's vice mountain champion again set the clear best time in 1'03.414. In the addition he was clearly ahead of Zajelsnik (2'09,020) and Lampert (2'09,438) with 2'06,501.

But what was almost to be feared came to pass - a tit-for-tat response from the Slovenian, who is based in Freiburg i. Br. and had been kicked out of the classification at the Osnabrück hill climb on August 4 after a protest by Steiner Motorsport. Now Zajelsnik criticized two details of his arch-enemy's LobArt LA01 and was proven right.

Misinterpretation of the regulations
His complaint was directed at the vehicle height (a fin on the airbox that was 28 millimeters too high) and the overhang (25 millimeters of exhaust). Indeed, no part of the aerodynamic structure may be more than 900 millimeters above the ground and no part of the car more than 800 millimeters behind the axle of the rear wheels.

Marcel Steiner: "I knew something was coming, but I didn't know what. It's my own fault and I probably misinterpreted the regulations for E2 sports cars. You can find something on every car if you look at it properly. He just found the right points."

Zajelsnik's revenge for Osnabrück was also directed against the cars of the Germans Alexander Hin (Osella PA30, ex Hugentobler) and Georg Lang (Renault FR 2.0). Their rear view mirrors were too small. Since these were behind him in the classification, one can probably not exactly speak of sporting fairness.

Steiner would have been the third Swiss winner
Marcel Steiner retains the satisfaction of having clearly defeated his archrival - whose driving qualities are also undisputed - on the track, although this is not reflected in the classification. It would have been only his second stage win in 2019 after Eschdorf (LUX) in the spring and the first ever on Austria's fastest track. There, his father Heinz Steiner won three times in a row with the Martini-BMW CN from 1995 to 1997. The only Swiss after Steiner sr. to achieve this was Eric Berguerand in 2012 and 2015.

Marcel Steiner: "Even if the fin had been lower and the exhaust shorter, I would have been just as fast. On the other hand, Patrik's top speed was suddenly much lower than in Osnabrück and last year in St. Agatha. Very funny..."

bergrennen.at/esthofen-st-agatha/results/2019