Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Arosa ClassicCar 2010 - exciting cars and optimal conditions

This year's Arosa ClassicCar hillclimb enjoyed almost optimal (weather) conditions. Except for some rain on Friday for the training the sun was shining and temperatures were just right for classic cars. The Arosa hillclimb is one of the most selective and challenging ones I know off. 7.8 km long, 78 curves (though some say 76). The fastest cars, for example my favorite, the Porsche 906 (Carrera 6), run in approximately 4 minutes and 40 seconds up the hill. But even if you take 5:30 you are still doing an average of approximately 90 km/h, regardless of the three hairpins and many narrow bends. The event features regularity and competition classes. As usual most of the cars are in the regularity class, but even these pilots are trying to optimize their uphill time. As said Friday was rainy, resulting in quite some crashes during the training. My JWF Milano GT showed some misfires because of high humidity, but then got much better on Sunday finally. I actually managed to become 10th of more than 140 drivers on Saturday in regularity, by pure luck though. Sunday I successfully tried to improve my lines and speed up the hill, so didn't give anything on regularity any more. Interesting was the comparison of the JWF with the Ford Galaxie 500 starting just behind each other. The JWF almost fits into the trunk of the Galaxie, probably has only half (or less) the horsepower, but on the bendy road is clearly faster than the Falcon, no wonder, right.
Everybody I talked to was very happy and excited about the race and most probably will come back next year again. I am still in the process of compiling a little movie that I will post later on.

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