[Video] This onboard makes us think about F1 hillclimbs | GRR
Imagine it. Once a season, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and co. have to line up, not together at the start of a 72-lap race, but individually, at the bottom of a steep, twisting hill. That weekend the points on offer will be given for the fastest time, the most incredible display of driving bravery, not just being in front. No tyre management, just speed.
That’s what watching the onboard, with Italian hillclimb ace Federico Liber, makes us think about. Liber is at the Trento-Bondone hillclimb, back in 2014, in his Formula Gloria C8F hillclimb car. And boy does the C8F sound good as it screams its way up the Italian Alps with Liber coaxing every last drop of performance from the car.
Walls are close, houses and hotels are just beyond and people watch from every vantage point. No run-offs, no big gravel traps, just Liber, a screaming engine and a ribbon of mountain tarmac.
A number of F1 drivers have expressed their wish for more WRC drivers to get recognition for their skills recently. How about we add hillclimbers into that mix? Imagine how heart-stopping it would be to watch the people we think of as the world’s greatest drivers, trying their hand a getting a car up 17km of hillclimb faster than the experts. Then we could see whether they are truly the absolute best.
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