European Finals!

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Friday - Practise | Saturday - Qualifying

Sunday – Finals Day

Another early start meant no rest for the wicked.  With 3 rounds of Finals for every driver and attempting to finish the meeting so everyone could get home on time was quite a challenge (geddit?), sorry.

Anyway before anything happened on Sunday, there was a 1 off race to run and the Concourse de Elegance which was won by Michael Creasey of the UK – winning a brand new RS4 Pro 2 kit for his efforts.  

A strange event happened late Saturday afternoon related to scrutineering which meant a heat of Super Nitro’s had to be re-run to fill the last places in the Super Nitro Finals.

5 Minutes later the race was finished and the remaining drivers were entered into the finals list and away we went…

Greg Hill mean while, took to the rostrum before the Finals to remind everybody it was 3 leg finals, to keep the racing clean and to enjoy the rest of the final day.  At 10am the first of the finals started – with the Mini’s first to go…

The A Finals were the races to watch as usual, especially with the VIP Limousine tours around California, flight and racing paid for, for the winners of each of the 6 classes.  Racing was close and exciting.  

The Mini Class was a close affair with the favourite Sven Zund having a poor first run with a pinion falling off allowing Andreas Fischer to take an early lead with the German Karlheinz in a close second but showing great pace.

The Second leg Sven led from start to finish and it looked like he would romp the 3^rd leg and take the winners spot…. What would happen?

Sven jumped from the start and pulled a fair lead.  Karlhienz had a bad start and had dropped back but was still showing the pace he showed in the first 2 legs where he had been unlucky.  Going into the 5^th or 6^th minutes Karlhienz was visibly closing and applying the pressure to Sven.  Coming through to the backmarkers, a nightmare scenario occurred when an unfortunate German driver collided with the leader Sven, taking him out of first place.  Sven’s car seemed to get damaged putting him out of contention while the bemused spectators and especially Karlhienz carried on and took the final leg and the trip to America.

The Sport Class was led by TQ man Michael Gebel until late in the race where Carlos Garcia pushed for the lead, taking the position through to the end.

In the second leg TQ man left the field standing leaving the 3^rd round for all the drivers to make their moves.

So there were 3 guys up for the Class victory, Michael Gebel (the favourite), Bernhard Stiener and Carlos Garcia.  After the 3^rd and final race the result came in…

Michael held onto 2^nd place which culminated in the overall victory on 19 points, followed on a tie on 18 points for second and third, split only by Qualifying position was Bernhard Stiener (2^nd) and Carlos (3^rd).

The Pro Class was the largest field of drivers competing for the title of fastest HPI in Europe, and of course the VIP Trip to the HPI Challenge 2000 World Finals in the USA.  It proved to be an exciting class from the start of qualifying till the last final on Sunday afternoon…

Darren Styles took top spot in the second round of qualifying posting the only 25 lap run of the weekend but was quickly overhauled in the first leg by 2^nd place qualifier Markus Greter and dropped to second.  Markus showed an incredible change of pace in the finals absolutely walking away and lapping most of the class before the first 5 minute final finished.

The first leg wasn’t the cleanest and drivers were warned that although they were competing for the European Finals, they must ‘keep it clean’… So from the buzzer Darren held his lead but not for long.  Markus picked up where he’d finished the first leg and pulled past Darren after he got out of shape past race control.  With Markus still in his sights, Darren made a brave last-ditch attempt at taking 1^st spot back, only to T-bone Markus and claiming the first driver warning of the finals.  I did say, keep it clean….

So Markus took the 2^nd leg and with it the Pro Class victory and shouts of joy could be heard around the track, well done Markus!

The 3^rd leg was for the remaining places but proved the closest race so far.  Young Christopher Ritchie ran strong holding pressure from behind from a super clean driving Kevin Brunsden and TQ man Darren Styles, eventually ending with Cyrille Gruaz, Chris and Darren in that order.  

Nitro Stock up next for one of the quieter classes (sorry what speaker system were they using, couldn’t hear a thing?)…

As you may guess, being indoor with Nitro cars proved an unusual experience, especially with Nitro fumes everywhere.  Well the club has one of the largest extractor fans I’ve ever seen, but you could say it gets noisy too – which has it’s own problems!!!  Combine the noise of Nitro cars and the extractor fan and we struggled to hear a thing, let alone the start sequence!  Not to worry though, soon sorted by using a flag start system (not ideal, but it worked)…

This class was a fight between TQ man Jean-Pierre and eventual winner Maxin Gulin from Russia (with Love – sorry, had too)!  It was really nice to see the small Team from Russia take a class, they made more noise than the other winner put together and were honestly thrilled they’d won, again well done Maxin.

Nitro Modified boys took to the track and again the noise made for interesting starts…  There were a couple of really top drivers in this class with Andy Kraemer (LRP), Johnathan Dobney (UK) and Cyrille Gruaz (Swiss) all competing for that first corner!!!

This and the Super Nitro have made the most interesting racing during the whole weekend.  The noise and speed of these cars separated them considerably, the 2 speed gearboxes and tuned exhausts really saw these shifting down the back straight.  With all the controlled rules HPI put into place, these cars were still simple too fast for this track, not that it spoiled the racing, in fact quite the opposite.

Johnathan Dobney ended up the most consistent driver, but goodness knows how!  Watching the final leg the lead swapped several times but Johnathan was driving the *&%*s out of his car.  It looked just like a go-kart constantly in a 4-wheel slide then pushing on in the fast sweepers...

At the end Johnathan help on for the win, the 10 minute last leg separating the men from the boys… or is that the boys (Johnathan although 6 foot +, is only 14 years old and a bright star for the future) from the men? 

In second and was Patrick Schaefer and TQ man, Cyrille Gruas third.

Super Nitro Modified Class would bring the curtain down on an interesting weekends racing, who would take the final Class and join the other 5 winners on the trip to America…

Nitro Modified winner Johnathan Dobney swapped his radio to get out again for the very next race only to lose it with bad luck in the last leg putting him out of contention to take the double.  This left some great driving from Marco Cannas and Gilles Cosandey from Switzerland to tie on 19 points each, split only by their qualifying position meant Gilles from pole, piped the disappointed Marco into second place. 

VIP Race

While Greg attempted to sort the finishing positions from all the finals, HPI organised a special VIP’s race for all the sponsors of the HPI Challenge 2000 European Finals.

The VIP race included guests from HPI included Tasuro Watanabe – president of HPI, Jason Dearden – ex Pro 10 European Champion and Jamie Booth.  From LRP we had Stefan Kohler and representing Team Orion we had Philippe Neidhart the President of Orion and motor man Oscar Jansen also giving it a go.  I’m not going to say who won or looked fastest because it was all for fun – wasn’t it Stefan!!!  

Anyway, cars were borrowed, charged and away they went.  With several current and old National and European Champions and the President of HPI racing, a large crowd watched and enjoyed some good clean but fast, fun racing.  These guys weren’t far off the pace with one quoting “ I’ve been watching these guys drive this track all weekend so I know all the lines I should be taking….”

There were no prizes but you could tell it finished the racing off in perfect style.  I think we’ll arrange this again next year along with the Table Football Championship…?

HPI - European Table Football Championship

During the weekend HPI decided to use the Table Football table to liven up events and instil more of the social, fun side of our race meetings by gathering every country to play head to head (good or bad) for a game in the HPI – European Table Football Championship.  

The basis of the game was to be the first team to score 10 goals.  The winners go through all the way to the finals (starting with the 1/8^th Qualifying round).

With HPI paying and a large trophy for the winning team and runners up, everyone got into the spirit of things and really enjoyed this side of the race meeting.

It has to be said that although all the games were great fun, the winning Swiss team really were in a league of their own.  Some of their ‘ball control’ and tricks - I’ve never witnessed before, most impressive and deserved European Champions, well done you guys!  

Trophies, Trophies ,Trophies…

The final ceremony of the weekend was to hand the trophies out to all the guys that competed at the top of their classes.  Tatsuro Watanabe was on hand to help Greg Hill present the trophies - all 16 finals and the top 3 from each final took around 45 minutes to complete before sending everyone home…happy, but completely  exhausted…  

Click here for the complete results from all the classes!

That’s about all from me, so until next year…

Goodbye, see you soon and thanks for all your support,

Greg Hill

HPI Europe Race Series and Special Event Manager 

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To the main page for the HPI Challenge European Finals

Full results:
Last name, first name, country (European abbreviations), points total