Pigiron .... Ms Image and I went to both the Gubbio and Braga FIA Hillclimb Masters events ....my C4 single-seater not really up to qualifying so went as crew for paddock pals (as it was outside our season a load of the racers treated it as an 'end of term outing' and went over as a gang to support our top drivers ... quite a party weekend! 🙂)

The top guys over there use the big sports-racers like Norma whereas our top guys are all open wheeler single-seaters and ran in a different class ... to say they were turning up at tracks that were radically different from what they were used to (some had to fit bigger fuel tanks just to get to the finish 🙂) ... and being 'first-timers' on long complex tracks they'd never seen before, while the competition raced there regularly as part of their series, the UK drivers were right up at the top end of the overall results, which surprised a few people ... very friendly events, though the top runners there are a bit 'remote' in a F1 sort of way what with being pro drivers ... as you say, big sponsorship, massive support trucks and hospitality ... made our top lads with their little transporters and trailers look small-time (in the UK it's an amateur sport with drivers financing cars and campaign out of their own wallet) ... can safely say we had a whole lot more fun and the speed of the likes of Wallace and Alex straight out of the box had them sweating 🙂 ..... Nicola and Olivia took the ladies crowns at Gubbio and Braga respectively .... we were all made very welcome and had a whale of a time ... we were all really disappointed when they didn't run it beyond the first few years.

K

Ps ... Pigiron ... I presume the 'separate event' at St Goueno is run within the main event ... just separate administratively? .... like how we sometimes co-run A and B licence meetings the same weekend to get round licencing issues in the UK (not called A and B licences anymore as they've been 'improved' by re-naming them with a sentence worth that no-one remembers ... but the practice still continues 🙂)

Last edited by Image; 12/06/24 01:00 PM.