Raphael San Millan: “Direct qualification for the European Championship A final is the goal”

The final of the European Grass Track Sidecar Championship on 30 August is fast approaching. For Raphael San Millan and his passenger Benedikt Zapf, the highlight of the season is just around the corner on their home track. San Millan and Zapf secured their starting place with a third-place finish in the qualifying race at Werlte, one of many races in which the MSC Berghaupten team finished on the podium.

Was Rastede a minor setback at just the right time?

“Apart from Rastede, we’ve always been on the podium so far,” says San Millan, summing up what has been a strong season so far. “We’ve usually been quite strong on the sand tracks at the start of the season, but when we moved onto the grass tracks as summer approached, we always had a bit of a dip in form. We wanted to avoid that this year. We’ve largely managed to do so. Rastede was a bit of a setback, but perhaps it came at just the right time and we’ve refocused, so we’re not taking anything for granted.”

They returned to the podium just one week after the race in Rastede at the grass-track race in Hertingen, where the San Millan/Zapf duo remained unbeaten. This allowed them to boost their confidence once again in the final test before the European Championship final.

“We were already very fast in Hertingen, although you can’t really compare the two tracks because they have completely different characteristics,” emphasises San Millan, who was born in Gengenbach in 1992 and is looking forward to the final on his home track. “The track in Berghaupten is absolutely worthy of a final because six teams can take to the track at once, which means four teams can secure a direct route to the A final. I think it’s bound to be tight in the first corner, but the track simply offers more space and opportunities there than elsewhere.”

And given how the season has gone so far – with two wins under their belt and, apart from a fourth-place finish in Rastede, every race ending on the podium – direct qualification for the A final is also the stated aim. San Millan: “We want to spare ourselves the gruelling route via the B final. The international field hasn’t been this close for a long time, and I think at least six or seven teams are in with a chance of a podium finish. A lot can certainly happen in an A final.”

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Offering a behind-the-scenes look with videos

Following the European Championship final, as with almost every race, there will be a video on San Millan’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@RaphaelSanMillan) and on the team’s website, giving fans a glimpse behind the scenes of the sport. “The driving force behind the clips is simply to raise awareness of the sport through additional channels and to give an insight into what a race day is like for us,” explains the qualified IT specialist, outlining his motivation for producing clips from the races and posting them online. “At first, I used to film some of it myself on race days. But at some point, that started to affect my performance in the race, so I scaled it back for a while. At the moment, I have someone on the team who films the races and the action on race day for us. I then edit it together at home, and it takes me two to four hours to finish a film like that.”