Friday, 29.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
Now there is some Action

Now there is some Action

14. December 2006In June DaimlerChrysler decided to withdraw from truck racing at the end of this season. Jochen Hahn, who, at that point, had just taken the lead in the overall standing, started looking for buyers interested in purchasing his equipment. But now Mercedes-Benz declared that next year they will go on with their engagement in truck racing – at least to the same extent as last season. So the Hahn team set to work on constructing a new race truck, and Markus Oestreich, too, sees bright prospects to sit in the cockpit of a Mercedes-RaceTruck next year. For Gerd Körber, however, the third German aspirant for the title, there will be a transfer.
In his twentieth year of truck racing the reigning vice champion and multiple title holder of the SuperRaceTrucks, Körber and the friend of his youth and long time companion, Buggyra race engineer Mario Kress, will part company. In all probability next season Gerd Körber will be driving an Egon Allgäuer MAN and maybe become a team mate of Hans-Joachim Stuck. But the tall Bavarian won’t probably be able to take part in all the truck races of the next season due to his many other engagements in motor sports, so that he would have difficulties in keeping all the appointments.
Markus Bösiger will probably change from MAN to Buggyra and take over Gerd Körber’s former cockpit. The man from Switzerland returned to truck racing two year’s ago, succeeding Stuart Oliver at the Atkins team. When last year Atkins’s main sponsor withdrew from truck racing at short notice, Bösiger entered the FIA European Truck Racing Championship on the Atkins truck with his own team, consisting of several Atkins crew members from the year before, while Atkins himself focused on the British Championship with Chris Levett as a driver. The young Englishman took also part in some of the EM rounds and was the only guest driver who gained points.
Next season David Atkins will return to European Truck Racing and will take part in the complete series – with Chris Levett as their first pilot, which means the Englishman would drive the truck with the new MAN Common Rail race engine. Markus Bösiger, as second pilot, would have gotten the other truck – an older version, but he will probably prefer to go to Buggyra.
This is some pondering more than a quarter of a year before the official entry deadline of the FIA – and a lot can happen in the meantime.
And apparently a lot is going on at Renault’s. The French car manufacturer is concentrating their energy mostly on the Czech race team of Frankie Vojtisek, with the firm goal of winning the European Championship three years from now. Such terms of reference will certainly not fail to have an effect on the other big powers among the manufacturers of commercial vehicles. The development of truck racing can only benefit from that fact. Possibly it could inspire all those to join in, who use the events of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship as a stage to present their products, however, keep rather aloof when it comes to commitments in the race series.