Tobias Baerschdorf has won another European Hillclimb Championship event. This isn’t very surprising, however the manner with which he won certainly was. It extended his championship lead to 41 points with 75 remaining, making his victory in E1 +2000 even more likely by the week. Antonis Parinopoulos won’t let this happen easily, but after the events of the St. Ursanne hillclimb, he will be wondering what he has to do to beat Baerschdorf.

Parinopoulos started very brightly. His first time up the hill was very impressive, and after a small mistake from the championship leader, the Greek driver put nearly half a second into him. It’s very rare that Baerschdorf makes one of those mistakes, it’s only happened once this season, so Parinopoulos made sure that this opportunity didn’t go begging.

He maintained a solid and consistent pace through Heat Two as well, wresting his Ford Escort up the hill with relative ease compared with his rival. The Mitsubishi underneath Baerschdorf didn’t look quite as settled or under his control as normal, and the serial winner had to work that bit harder to go quickly.

But his winning streak has now been extended to four races in succession. Bearschdorf pulled something special out in the final heat, beating his own best by half a second in a magical display of driving, which could have only been produced by someone like him.

It was another consistent and solid enough run from Parinopoulos but solid wasn’t going to be enough anymore, to beat Bearschdorf, nothing less than perfection will do. In the end, it was the German’s day once again, this time by only three tenths of a second. A dejected Antonis Parinopoulos will have to pick himself up again before the next round in Slovenia.

Elsewhere in Switzerland, the usual suspects were winning once again. Sebastian Ronat took both E2-SCSS 3000 and overall victories by 12 seconds in front of Francois Carratti, despite crashing over the finish line for the final time.

Chris Bennett returned to the paddock in the Tatuus, and without any competition won in that class again. And finally, Javi Rodriguez returned to winning ways after being beaten by Ivan Moro two weeks ago, fending off a spirited effort from Valadis Karalis in the Renault Clio.

There are now only three rounds to go in the European Hillclimb Championship. Make sure you catch the next round on the 8th of November, at 21:30 CET.