European Hill Race ESCHDORF no 2022 edition 11.03.2022: In 2020 and 2021, the organizer of the traditional Eschdorf Hill Race was forced to cancel the event due to the sanitary safety restrictions and the uncertainty of the situation

In 2020 and 2021, the organizer of the traditional Eschdorf Hill Race was forced to cancel the event due to the sanitary safety restrictions and the uncertainty of the situation. But even if the situation now seems to improve significantly and no more restrictions will weigh on the sporting events, the board of the "Union des Pilotes" must unfortunately stick to its decision to refrain from staging the " European Hill Race " again this year.



With 31 previous editions since the first race in September 1988, including the first edition of the FIA Hillclimb Masters 2014, for which the World Motorsport Federation has chosen Eschdorf as the venue, as well as the "Classic Day", which celebrated one hundred years of motor racing in Luxembourg in 2013, the small Ardennes village has established an excellent reputation in hillclimb racing far beyond the borders of the Grand Duchy.


More or less 5,000 spectators from Luxembourg, but above all from the neighboring countries including Switzerland, Great Britain, the Netherlands made the Eschdorf hill climb one of the top events in the national sports calendar for all disciplines.


This for the simple reason that the organizers have always tried to attract an internationally high-quality starting field to Luxembourg, so that the absolute majority of the foreign national champions and their most important opponents started at least once, often even as loyal regulars in Eschdorf.


The flip side of the coin, however, is that the effort required for an event of this magnitude became increasingly difficult to manage, all the more so because the number, motivation and availability of the volunteer helpers has continued to dwindle in recent years, a phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic-induced inactivity and isolation.


At the same time, the team infrastructure of the various participants became more and more professional and space-consuming over the years, while the space available for the paddock in the town became smaller and smaller due to construction works and dwindling interest from local residents.



It also became more and more difficult, for example, to provide electricity to as many participants as possible, spectator parking spaces were eliminated, and spectator areas along the track also became more and more difficult to access and use due to natural wild growth.



In addition, there is the restructuring of various foreign championships and race series, in whose concept the European Hill Race no longer really fit, as well as the impossibility of finding a free weekend for the year 2022 in the international calendar, which is preferably not occupied with a race of the French, Belgian, German and / or Swiss national championship and in the optimal case of the European Mountain Championship, in order to guarantee a qualitatively high-class starting field with a large number of foreign guest starters.



In short, a multitude of reasons why the Union des Pilotes has put its activities on hold for the time being in order to observe all possible options in the coming months and to weigh up whether and in which form a return to the action in the near future seems conceivable.




Union des Pilotes- Patrick Weber transl. Deepl   photo Romain Scholer AutoMobilSport.com