Arlberg Mountain Slalom

There are 200 spots. They sell out months in advance. The race runs on a real road, the Arlberg Pass, closed for the weekend while GT3s, rally cars, and a lone KTM X-Bow work a standing kilometer of tight Alpine tarmac. No grandstands, no paddock village. Just the mountain and whoever showed up.

The Race

The Arlberg Renn Slalom calls itself Austria's largest mountain race slalom, and from what I saw there's no reason to argue with that. The course climbs from the village of Stuben up toward the pass, 1,500 meters of road that was never meant to be a circuit. It bends, tightens, opens briefly, then tightens again. On a motorcycle you'd call it proper riding. In a car at full attack, it looks genuinely difficult.

Friday and Saturday are completely separate events, not rounds of the same championship. Each race gives drivers a run or two to learn the layout, then four timed runs with the best three counting. One bad run doesn't kill your result.

Stuben is a small place. A handful of hotels and guesthouses, nothing more. The whole thing feels like something the locals just kept doing because it's fun. You walk up the road, find a gap at the barriers, and watch from maybe two meters away.

The Photos

I shot these over two days, moving along the road and finding angles wherever there was room. The Porsche GT3 RS ran in yellow and white. The KTM X-Bow had no body panels. The rally car sounded like nothing else bouncing off the mountain walls.

The grid — Arlberg Pass, June 2026

Click any photo to open the full gallery — keyboard arrows to navigate

The Gear

Sony RX100 VII — the only camera I brought

I brought the RX100 VII because it fits in a jacket pocket and still reaches 200mm equivalent. On a course like this you're moving the whole time. You can't set up and wait, so I'd shoot from one spot, walk 200 meters up the road, shoot again. A big camera bag would have ended that.

Alpine light in June is harsh by 10am. The MagFilter adapter ring means I can swap filters without unscrewing anything, which matters when a car comes through every 60 seconds. The variable ND let me drag the shutter on fast passes without climbing ISO into noise. Sony's AGR2 grip makes the body comfortable for a full day. The SMALLRIG cage adds a cold shoe and keeps everything solid.