Preliminary Report Zolder

05. September 2006The trend to have 3-days events goes on, and so the free practice at the Q8 Truck Grand Prix in Zolder will take place on Friday afternoon already. The programme is so filled to the brim with events that there will be no space left for any incidents which may occur, because Zolder always has problems with the time schedule. After carrying on a lawsuit for a long time, some local resident obtained a judgement that forbids to rev up the engines after 6:00 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. respectively. And because there is a small pilgrimage church on a hill within the circuit where a Holy mass is celebrated on Sunday mornings, it is absolutely forbidden to start the races before 10:00 a.m. on Sundays. And so Zolder on several occasions got into difficulties when spectacular accidents required substantial clearing up afterwards.
But there could be other problems arising, too. One of the guest drivers from Finland withdrew from the race, but there are still 29 race trucks in Zolder which means there will be more pilots at the start than the race track allows. In addition to the 23 FIA pilots, there is the Swede Mikael Johansson with his eye-catching red Scania, who participated already on the Ring and in Most. And Heinz-Werner Lenz with his Iveco wants to start, too. Furthermore there is Sascha Lenz who is going to complete the Lenz team and who – same as at the TGP – will drive the MB Brasil Hauber. And with the Atkins team there is Chris Levett, who so far was at the start for the British Championship. And, of course, there is the Scania pilot Erwin Klein Nagelvoort.
Some special case is Olivier Robineau. The man from France will drive with the truck and the starting number of his brother Pascal, one of the 25 registered FIA pilots, whose injuries from the accident on the Ring were so severe that his doctor did not allow him to start. So what category does Olivier now belong to? Is he a guest driver with a race-by-race starting permit, or is he, by replacing his brother, to be seen as a FIA pilot? To those questions we didn’t get an answer from the FIA. What if Olivier Robineau should indeed score points with the starting number of his brother?
For the practice the limit is 30 trucks, for the races only 26. Should the FIA pilots, regardless of how they fare at the timed practice, principally have precedence over the other pilots, then only 3 guest drivers could participate. And if Robineau should start as FIA pilot, only 2 guest drivers would have the chance to take part. On the other hand, if it were decided that the first 26 pilots of the timed practice could start at the Qualifying race – no matter if FIA or guest pilots – it could happen that, under exceptional circumstances, one or the other candidate for the championship could also be affected not only for 1 but for 2 races. Cause those who didn’t participate in the Qualifying race, couldn’t start at the Cup race either. Although all this pondering is purely hypothetical, the regulations should be clarified and stipulated before the races. For our database we decided to add a “0” to Olivier Robineau’s starting number 21.
Very often in the past years the race weekends in Zolder were rather rainy, but it seems that this year this won’t be the case. The weather is likely to be fine, although for the race weekend the forecast says there will no longer be such extreme heat as on midweek of up to 30 degrees Centigrade (86 degrees Fahrenheit), but some pleasant 23 to 24 degrees C., ( 73 to 75 degrees F.). There will be some clouds but it will stay dry. This will just be to the liking of the pilots and the audience, so that certainly even more people from Germany will go there. For one thing, for the truck racing fans from the Lower Rhine and from the Ruhr District Zolder is even easier to reach than the Nürburgring, and the other thing is that 19.50 Euros (25.00 Euros at box office) for the paddock weekend ticket is rather customer-friendly.
EUROSPORT plans to broadcast the TV report on Tuesday, September 19, at 23:00 (11:00 p.m.) hours. As told already, the report of the races in Most will be aired on Tuesday, September 12, at 23:00 (11:00 p.m.) hours.