South African businessman Pieter Zeelie competed at the FIA International Hill Climb Cup at Osnabrück in Germany on 6 and 7 August, finishing second in the highest Performance Factor class (PF1) and third overall in the Production Car category.
He was at the helm of his highly modified Toyota MR2 Super GT V6 Turbo, competing against 185 entries from 14 countries across the various classes, and it was his very first run out at the event. The 2.03km Osnabrück course (that has 13 corners versus approximately eight of Simola) is located in Lower Saxon, with 2022 being the 54th edition of the event, which attracted around 25 000 spectators.
According to Zeelie, the track does have a couple of differences compared to the Simola stretch, such as the barriers on the edges of the tar surface and the trees along the road, which produced a lot of shadows, making it difficult to find the optimal braking and turn-in points. Zeelie’s podium finish was made even more impressive with the limited time he had to familiarise himself with the course, as competitors only have three test runs on Saturday, followed by three competition runs on Sunday. The two fastest times on Sunday are added together to determine the final podium positions.
He was at the helm of his highly modified Toyota MR2 Super GT V6 Turbo, competing against 185 entries from 14 countries across the various classes, and it was his very first run out at the event. The 2.03km Osnabrück course (that has 13 corners versus approximately eight of Simola) is located in Lower Saxon, with 2022 being the 54th edition of the event, which attracted around 25 000 spectators.
According to Zeelie, the track does have a couple of differences compared to the Simola stretch, such as the barriers on the edges of the tar surface and the trees along the road, which produced a lot of shadows, making it difficult to find the optimal braking and turn-in points. Zeelie’s podium finish was made even more impressive with the limited time he had to familiarise himself with the course, as competitors only have three test runs on Saturday, followed by three competition runs on Sunday. The two fastest times on Sunday are added together to determine the final podium positions.
Despite just six opportunities to get used to the course, Zeelie put in two of his two best runs with a time of 1:02:014 and 1:01.44, giving him a combined time of 2:03.458. This placed him overall in the Production Car category, with the win going to Frenchman Nicolas Werver (1:59.871) in his purpose-built Porsche 911 GT3 R, achieving a best run of 59.490 seconds.
Czech driver Dan Michl was second overall in his super lightweight 750kg Lotus Elise powered by a Hartley V8 engine, which is a mating of two Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle engines, similar to the engine used by SA’s Franco Scribante in his Chevron B26.
Michl posted the fastest time of 1:00.397 and a combined time of 2:01.584 to take the PF1 class win by a margin of 1.874 seconds over Zeelie. Italian driver Luca Gaetani had to settle for third in PF1 in his Ferrari 488 Challenge behind the South African driver, being relegated to the final step on the podium by 0.188 seconds.
If you'd like to see his run, click here.
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