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Zolder - This and That

Zolder - This and That

18. September 2006The 6th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Zolder took place under a bright sunshine, yet only about 16,000 spectators were counted. And on Saturday they numbered not more than 4,000 people. Could it be that the state-of-the-art scanner system played a trick on the Belgian organizers? But this was of no great interest, at least to the truck racing teams; the topic on Friday was that the caravan of Heinz-Werner Lenz caught fire on Thursday night.
Most of the truck racing fans know this eye-catching-Lenz-orange-vehicle with the extendable side parts. On Friday morning H.-W. Lenz brought the gutted wreckage back to his workshop in Neuwied. (To quote H.W.L: "Every time I looked in the rear mirror and saw the remains of my caravan, it brought tears to my eyes!") But already in the evening he was back in the paddock with another caravan which was even bigger, more beautiful and more magnificent than the old one - a loan from a business associate he is friends with. On Thursday evening - before the fire - Lenz told that he is planning to have his son Sascha start at all the FIA races at the coming season. And Lenz - ever the incurable optimist - will certainly not alter his plans in spite of the incident in Zolder. After all, H.-W. Lenz, who was European Truck Racing Champion three times, has overcome even graver setbacks.
Otherwise, there weren´t many really exciting incidents. Nobody was griping about anything. The strokes of fate - namely the failures of some of the trucks - which befell especially the three German candidates for the title, Jochen Hahn, Gerd Körber and Markus Oestreich, were accepted without any grumbling. In any case, now the championship will stay exciting to the end. The winner will probably not be known till the final race.
A great nuisance in Zolder is the structure and location of the paddock, and there will certainly be no change for the better in the near future. A big problem is, in fact, the bottle neck behind the pits. When the race cars line up there for the race, then everything is blocked up for 15 to 20 minutes. It would be disastrous if, at that time, something happened which would require a rescue team there.
The huge sand/clay hills at the rear of the paddock, which were heaped up for the MotoCross World Championship in 2003, should be surrounded with a small wall. Because for the teams situated there, the muck sliding down from the hills onto the paddock again and again is an imposition.
At the front part of the paddock the marquees of the industry were erected; also the ones of Renault and Mercedes Benz. While Frankie Vojtisek´s tent was next to the marquee of Renault, the three Mercedes race trucks stood far away from the Mercedes Benz marquee, much to the dismay of the responsible DC people. Instead, there were several show trucks standing next to the MB VIP marquee, and to make matters worse, they all were from their competitors.
When the press centre opened on Friday afternoon, the people responsible for the equipment were appalled to hear from the journalists that the internet did not work. But it didn´t take long and then in the air-conditioned rooms the press people were provided with one of the best WLAN systems - functioning without any interferences - of the whole season.
The Zolder truck racing report will be broadcast on Tuesday, September 19, at 23:00 hours (11:00 p.m.) on EUROSPORT and will be rerun on Wednesday morning, September 20, at 9:00 hours (9:00 a.m.).