This Osella hillclimb run is so fast it looks sped up
A screaming engine breaks the silence of the picturesque Austrian countryside, as a speeding car tears up the hillside. But this isn’t a boy racer, this is Christian Merli’s record-breaking hillclimb run at the 2019 Rechberg Rennen.
After taking victory and a new record at the first round of the European Hill Climb Championship in France, the Italian driver repeated the feat at the second round in Tulwitz, south-eastern Austria.
The two-day event featured three practice runs up the 5.05km course on Saturday, followed by two race heats on Sunday. At the wheel of his Osella FA 30 Zytek LRM, the Team Blue City Motorsport leader Merli beat his own 2017 record time of 1 minute 52.916 seconds with an impressive 1 minute 50.876 second run.
Quite how anyone has the nerve to do more than 150mph in a 475bhp, 575kg, downforce-dependent prototype, on bumpy, dusty country roads surrounded by trees and huge drops is beyond us…