After a two-year break, the engines finally roared again on the Eggberg in Bad Säckingen. The former Eggberg race made a successful comeback as the "Eggberg Classic" on the last weekend of September under the auspices of the Bad Säckingen Automobile Club and with the help of Hubert Hottinger (co-organizer of the last eight historic events on site).
International participation
The name change had been necessary because otherwise no permit would have been granted in the green state of Baden-Württemberg with the word "race" in the name. Although a splendid historic hill climb race was taking place at the same time in Steckborn, Switzerland, less than 100 km away as the crow flies, the Swiss made up a good half of the field of almost 120 cars. The rest were also recruited almost entirely from the region.
Legendary route
The 4.25 km long track up to Egg was already being used for motorsport 102 years ago. It experienced its greatest period between 1967 and 1988. The most prominent starter then and now was the Black Forest mountain king Mario Ketterer, who never managed to win an overall victory there during his active career.
The old warhorse was also unlucky this time, as the gearbox on his car, a private Porsche 911 RSR Carrera in a beautiful Martini livery, broke down during the first inspection run on Saturday morning. However, RSR owner Ottokar Krust quickly procured a near-series replacement so that the man from Freiburg was still able to start.
Lots of enthusiasm among pilots and helpers
"The track is as good as it used to be and is just as much fun," reported Ketterer. In fact, it is longer, more challenging and in a much better condition than some of the current tracks in the German Hill Climb Championship. With a more clever choice of dates (in addition to Steckborn, the two major mountain events Rossfeld and Grossglockner races were also taking place), much more could have been achieved on this fantastic course and especially in the pre-war area. Not least because the town of Bad Säckingen supports the event with great goodwill.
In keeping with the new zeitgeist of "classics instead of racing", the uniformity winner and his car was also the winner: the heaviest and most powerful car in the field, a 1959 Cadillac Coupé de Ville driven by Mike Möhlin and Eric Rufenacht, came out on top in the end with the smallest deviation.
