Whilst OTW is entirely non political, we are not averse to opinions along the way based primarily, it has to be said, on observations and events. First of all, what are the chances of a top of the range telephoto lens failing at the May Buckminster and the replacement failing after the first day in Switzerland? Many of the images in this report therefore will be from a mobile phone that only takes photos when it wants to, not when the faux button is pressed. Secondly, as with much else, these trips depend entirely on technology and that it works. A few years ago a licence failure rendered 50% of all card machines on the continent inoperable for nearly three weeks, so fuel, food, shopping and hotels demanded cash. This time it was an hotel check in system that failed and even worse a gare de peage that had a total IT outage leaving a 6 mile queue going nowhere headed west and open barriers headed east, (our direction) phew. Finally, seeing the thousands of HGV/LKW trucks almost nose to tail on every road taking stuff from countries that now make or grow it to countries that used to make and grow it renders any thoughts of reducing air pollution very much a non starter.
More immediately, the ever rising cost of travel and accommodation and aforesaid HGVs adding to the general traffic chaos has led to much reduced entries at meetings, certainly the thinnest in the post Covid era. It cost us just on £100 to use the autoroutes, but by golly, its worth it after the horror stories from other competitors.

So to the event with training on the Saturday during which Hans Isenegger's daughter arrived with the remainder of the cars from her late father. Five had already gone to the US and Urs Bach snapped up another with a Swiss connection. One previously destined for the UK was delivered, a 10cc from the early 70s built, apart from the OPS motor, almost entirely by Max Zaugg whom we had met at Basel on occasions. Another is also headed to the UK. With the restricted entry, two leisurely rounds of competition on the Sunday started in a somewhat sombre mood as we raised a glass of champagne to remember Vladimir Kriger, a good friend of many SMCC members.
 

Three of the nine 10cc cars being sold	Bronze medal 1991 Gallarate	Memorabilia

'Herself' had the venerable Kapusikov that had refused to play at the European Championships, but came up nicely after a master class in tweaking GloBee plugs. Disaster though in the first round as the pounding from the damper attached to the tank caused it to split in training. Judicious filling and a quick getaway was enough for second at that stage and a search for a soldering iron. Philipp Meier led at 243kph With Florian Baumann in third. Incidentally Philipp was running car 0003 and herself car 0007, two of the oldest cars currently in competition. After a convivial lunch Natalia Bach improved to take the lead dropping the fast lady to third but at a much improved speed, also learning a lot more about GloBee plugs in the process and how even the most sophisticated plug tester can lie?
 

Zaugg 10cc from 1972	Seventy year age gap, a sport for all	Dario Cuccuru & Florian Baumann

Antonio DellaZoppa has been further developing his electric Class 5 car and was giving that a couple of runs, now headed towards the 300kph mark. He has, very kindly, produced a detailed article on the latest developments, which will be published in the August edition of OTW.
 

Continued development of Antonio's Class 5 electric car

Just single entries in Class 2 and 3b with Manu Finn not stressing his engine. Class 3 was very hit and miss with only four runs recorded but just 0.8kph between Daniela Schmutz in first and Andreas Kestenholz in second. Class 4 was even more bizarre with failures all round, apart from Thomas Finn close to his customary 300kph.
 

Preparing the toast to Vladimir Kriger	Thomas Finn at the start	Pushing off Manu's 2.5

If Class 4 was bizarre then class 5 was verging on the ridiculous with just four runs in total all within 2kph of each other but only just over 300kph. Janis Meier was on the top step, now just old enough to have a bottle of wine as a prize rather than another can of WD40, with Natalia Bach 0.33kph behind in second. The final act was the very fastest run of the day at 328kph by Paul-Otto Strobel who pressed not the timing button but a protruding green light above it, not immediately obvious as others had discovered in the heat of the moment.
 

Thank you hug from Peter	5cc Class	1.5cc Class

After several day of 33 degrees the weather broke on the Sunday evening with a storm of biblical proportions lighting the sky continuously for an hour or more. Still torrential in the morning, but thankfully, clearing just a few miles up the road. After the chaos of last year, it was an entirely relaxing drive up to the Black Forest and the first test of a 1300cc turbo with six speeds. Romped up the hills as long as you kept waggling the gearstick appropriately.

Kapfenhardt

Schwarzwald Wanderpreis

RGS is now reduced to just four members owing to the German rule regarding geographic location as to which club you may join, but it was like a gathering of the clans with David Giles and June Heath, 'myself' and 'herself' from the UK, Horst Denneler, Volker and Anette Besang making a welcome return and new club member Roland Volker. This spread the load a bit, especially as the council did all the major mowing on Tuesday and Roland had a car full of serious landscape maintenance equipment. In just a day, the track and surroundings were ready, helped by the fact that it was the only completely dry day of the week. Hard at work with a bewildering selection of cables, components and electronics was Christoph Rabenseifner who is developing a new and integrated timing and race management system that will eventually be for sale. At present, the timing element is complete with LED screens all around and the race management system working with a huge LED monitor updating every few seconds. At present though, the two systems are not talking to each other, requiring new PCBs and a lot of software programming. For training the old bulb matrix display and sensor was pressed into use again.

News filtered through of yet another loss to the community, Edvard Stelling. It would be almost impossible to quantify the number of cars, engines and tuned pipes he has supplied over his long career so it was another champagne session to drink to his memory. A measure of how much the current financial and political situation is affecting tethered car racing was that there were just 98 cars entered, including the double entries, just about half of what there would have been pre Covid. This did result in a leisurely start and very long lunch breaks each day that allowed for plenty of chat. Something of a surprise was to meet Peter Rathke, who along with Amadeus Kurz organise the International swapmeet at Lampertheim-Huttenfeld. Amadeus lives relatively locally, but Peter had driven some 10 hours to meet up, allowing an almost unique occurrence with the owners of the only three Speedwell motors known to exist to meet up and compare engines. Philipp Meier had also brought along a hobby magazine featuring the first ever meeting at Kapfenhardt in 1958, which featured Roland Salomon and his 'Killer' car.
 

First meeting at the track in 1958 with Roland Salomon	The talk was of Speedwells

Class 1: With the continued absence of Andri Yakimiv, Rain Teder reigns supreme with his two 1.5cc cars, both recording winning speeds, something Mats Bohlin achieved regularly. Natalia Bach improved her speed from Basel to finish second, with our own Aaron Monk in third, the only other competitor to get into the 240s. Philipp Meier who would normally expect to be on the podium suffered an embarrassing mechanical failure on his only run.

Class 2: After his record breaking and winning spree Manu Finn had two failures, spoiling what would have been a most interesting fight for positions, as Gyorgi Bondor put in a 270, Lembit Vaher a 268 and Gabor Dobrocsi 267. After a thin time, the 2.5cc class is now better supported with the 1.5s somewhat more sparse.
 

Frank Wadle F2B World finalist	Oliver, Michel and Aaron with Bohlin car	Very fast 3b for sale from Ihor

Class 3: This was the largest class, even outnumbering the 10s as new engines and cars are freely available. Four UK entries including a very nice car from Aaron Monk, built up from one of the CNC pans and carbon bodies Stelling had for sale at Basel in 2023. Serhii Kasanov from the Ukraine ran out the winner at 283kph with Yunash from Poland second, Virunurm from Estonia third. Followed by two Hungarians, a truly pan European list. David Giles was the best of the British at 262kph with the others from the team in 12^th,13^th, 14^th places and ahead of several respected names.
 

New 10cc retro car motor being built by Gabor Dobrocsi		New Ukrainian 2.5 motor

Once again, the meeting coincided with Paul-Otto Strobel's birthday, and as previously, he invited everyone to join him at a nearby Italian restaurant on the Saturday evening. To say that there was a surfeit of food is something of an understatement. After unlimited antipasto and appero the main courses appeared. The choice was meat or fish, no problem. Oliver Monk asked the waiter the choices of meat and was told, beef, pork, lamb, and that was what it was, one exceptionally large piece of each. The fish was Salmon, Tuna, Octopus, Squid and Prawn, yes, all of that on one plate, plus huge quantities of vegetables. Some of us by judicious eating managed a dessert, luscious as only an Italian ice card can be. One can understand the champagne toast to his health as Otto picked up the bill for everybody, thanks Otto. Despite his on-going health problems, he is determined to get to the US for the World Championships in October.
 

The top table	Otto with the Stranzinger family

Class 4: A complete turn around this year with none of the top three from last year featuring at all and Thomas Finn back where he could have expected to be in 2024 had it not been for engine failure. Very tight at the top with Thomas at 301 and Gabor Peto a smidgeon behind at 299. I needed 290 to be in with a shout so pressed the button as the car hit the mark only to have the plug blow after six laps, but only losing one place. Third step on the podium was newcomer Roland Volker with the late Fred Kirschner's car. This class followed the trend in Class 2 with as many nulls as there were timed runs, very narrow margins between relative success and a blank on the screen.

Two runs that did provide significant interest were not for the speed, but for the car. Oliver Monk had asked if we could transport his Mats Bohlin 10cc so that he could run it on a FEMA track. This was one of the later Bohlin cars from 2014 and probably not run, apart from a quick burst at Buckminster, for 10 years. With just one quick training run on Friday, 309kph made the exercise very worthwhile and helped towards something of a landmark for the British team. For the first time ever, with an entry and speed recorded in each class, GB finished in 4^th place in the Schwarzwald Wanderpreiss, won this time round by the team from Hannover.
 

Oliver Monk with Bohlin 10cc	Oliver, Michel and Aaron inspecting the car	Rain Teder

What is always worth remembering when perusing results is that FEMA used to allow proxy running of cars, but then banned it but allowed two cars per entry. However only one car could score so to have both cars scoring it became common to register the second car in the name of the wife, partner or even mother, who may have had no connection or input into the car whatsoever. Quite bizarre to think that a European Champion never so much as touched the car that put them on the top step. Not the way it works in our household though.
 

Class 1 Rain Teder Natalia Bach            Aaron Monk	Class 2 Gyorgi Bondor Lembit Vaher         Gabor Dobrocsi	Class 3 Serhii Khasanov Pavlo Yunash    Hannes Virurum

Class 4 Thomas Finn Gabor Peto        Roland Volker	Class 5 Tony Sepp Tadeusz Koronka   Danielle Duran	Schwarzwald Wanderpreis HMC Hannover

No dignitaries at the presentation this year, so we could accept our bottles of TL for helping prepare the venue without too much embarrassment. A thoroughly enjoyable trip with all, and no IT glitches to disrupt our return journey, but a final and possibly contentious thought. The Astra did the trip with three stops for fuel, but still half a tank left. Had we been running electric and having to rely on public charging, as that was the only option, would have needed 6-7 stops, lots of hanging around and a cost almost exactly double that of the petrol, makes you think?