Most - This and That

30. August 2007Nobody could say that the race weekend in Most was uneventful. First of all, on Friday there was the official statement of the Team Hahn Racing that in future Mercedes Benz will hold their commitment to the European Truck Racing in abeyance, which meant that Team Hahn will have to reorientate themselves. And on Sunday it caused discussions when the first three finishers of the Qualy race, Markus Bösiger, David Vrsecky and Antonio Albacete, were excluded from the results or disqualified - which makes no difference in regard to the consequences. And so the outdoor temperature of up to 32 °C (90 °F) was not the only reason for the heated atmosphere in the press centre (considered a makeshift solution for more than a decade) on the pit roof with the panoramic windows and the tarred flat roof, where the temperature was even exceeding 40 °C (104 °F).
There were already rumours for some time about a withdrawal of Mercedes from truck racing, as it was said beforehand that by end of June - that is before the Truck Grand Prix at the Ring - they will announce their decision about the setting of direction for the future. When nothing happened the confirmed pessimists interpreted this directly as an answer in the negative, whereas the optimists hopefully pointed out that in the year before, the final decision from Stuttgart was not announced before December, and they thought that the big PR appearance of Mercedes Benz at the Nürburgring was a positive sign.
The tenor of all the discussions last weekend was, however, that this was not yet a decision made by the board of directors. But to what extend the board actually intervenes in the truck racing matters remains to be seen. Yet, many truck racers are still optimistic, true to the motto: hope dies last. Now there should not arise the false impression that suddenly everybody wants to get at the start with a Mercedes truck, but there is the apprehension that there could be an announcement effect which may have consequences, as was the case with the SuperRaceTrucks. So it might be that the above photograph of a Mercedes RaceTruck in front of the Most circuit’s landmark soon will have rarity value.
While the discussions about Mercedes Benz were rather restraint, there were ferocious debates especially after Sunday’s Qualy race. There are no pictorial documents available so far of the incidents that were the topic of all the discussions; apparently they were beyond the range of the photographers and the TV cameras. Neither could the pictures transferred from the cameras at the track to the monitor at the press centre throw light on the matter. This means that the people who have to make the decision, rely entirely on the statements of the parties involved.
Reportedly, after the scramble at the start of the Saturday’s Cup race, Permanent Race Director Tony Iddon had already called for a drive-through penalty for Vrsecky and Albacete, to make an example once and for all. But presumably the stewards declined his request; after all, Bösiger would have gained a bonus of 20 points at one stroke because of that.
So we can only hope that very soon there will be a decision regarding the appeal against the exclusion, so that - at the latest - before the final race in Jarama there will be clarifications about the points. Still fresh in our minds is the appeal of Egon Allgäuer against his disqualification because of the incident with the steel rope in Albacete two years ago. Here, too, it took a long time before they got their act together - by the way, to the disadvantage of Allgäuer.
The Austrian was also in Most the jinx of the weekend. On Saturday he missed the timed practice because of some repairs that had to be done, and later on was unable to finish the two subsequent races. And on Sunday, too, it didn’t run as smoothly as he might have hoped. But on Monday morning the MAN pilot shot a PR film where, according to the script, he had to leave a Porsche in the dust - and he was already back to a cheerful mood.