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Team Championship

Team Championship

03. March 2007At this year’s season there will be a team ranking at the FIA European Truck Racing Championship for the first time. At first there were doubts whether it would be possible to build a sufficient number of teams in such a short space of time. So some weeks ago Lutz Bernau suggested to, at least, extend the closing date for the applications. After all , for a long time, it was only certain that Egon Allgäuer and Gerd Körber with MAN, and Markus Bösiger and David Vrsecky with Buggyra, would form teams. However, the regulations require a minimum of 3 teams to get a ranking. Two days ago was the deadline for the ranking, but so far there is no official announcement yet.
But meanwhile Lutz Bernau declared that not only title holder Antonio Albacete, but also the French FIA GT pilot Jean-Philippe Belloc, who was already rather successful on an Allgäuer truck at last year’s finale in Le Mans, will join his team. Frankie Vojtisek and his Renault team could win the Spaniard Simeon Martin as a second pilot with great truck racing experience, both in a Spanish DAF team and as a guest driver for Heinz-Werner Lenz. Mercedes Benz did not yet imply which pilots will start with a Swabian truck. Up until now, Jochen Hahn is the only one of the top bracket whose start as a Mercedes pilot is certain. Euroline boss Braco Radovanovic has not yet clearly indicated whether he will take part in 2007. His Croatian pilot, Nico Pulic, is said to be concentrating on hillclimbing for the coming season, but Markus Oestreich would certainly start a new attempt to win the European Championship with Euroline. Last year’s fourth in the ranking together with the third in the ranking, Jochen Hahn, would then be a rather powerful team.
Because of the new team ranking the pilots will probably change their fighting strategy of the past considerably. They will no longer risk to hit one of their team mates just for the chance of a slight advantage of their own. And under these circumstances last year’s dicey situation in Jarama, when during Sunday’s Cup Race the three most promising Mercedes pilots pushed each other off the track at the first corner, wouldn’t have happened.
Some time ago it became known that two new drivers are going to engage in truck racing. Michal Dolak will start for the Czech CarDo Racing Team on Adam Lacko’s MAN truck, as Stan Matejovsky and his team are said to pull out of truck racing for good. At the French Renault Team 14 the GT pilot Anthony Janiec will take over the cockpit of Vincent Crozier.