Saturday in Barcelona

10. May 2008Barcelona - At first it was indeed raining constantly, but the rain was not as heavy as feared – until the start of the Championship race. During the two free practices the truck racers obviously showed some restraint, nobody wanted to run the risk to smash his truck on the slippery track right at the beginning. Already in the Warm-Up lap of the timed practice Jennifer Janiec (Renault) and Egon Allgäuer (MAN) had to cope with technical problems and their trucks were towed to the pit lane. As a result there was a delay of more than 20 minutes, which in the end was advantageous to the drivers because the rain subsided and the condition of the surface allowed the pilots to accelerate the pace, and in the end the former fastest times were improved considerably. Then title holder Markus Bösiger (Buggyra Freightliner) achieved the first pole of this year, ahead of Antonio Albacete who was 8 hundredth faster than Jochen Hahn (also MAN).
Then the stay in the Parc Fermé took extraordinary long, which made several teams a bit nervous. But during the briefing in the morning it was already pointed out that, after the trouble last year in Jarama, now there would principally be a Parc Fermé time of 30 minutes.
The Qualy race that followed showed, for the first time this season, the actual balance of power – and it’s just the same as last year. Bösiger, Albacete, Hahn and David Vrsecky (Buggyra Freightliner) seem to set the pace again. Stuart Oliver, with a new engine – but in the same truck as last year – was close behind Vrsecky, and also Jean-Philipp Belloc – with an all-new TGS – crossed the finish line with a difference of less than half a second. He was closely followed by Allgäuer und Markus Altenstrasser (Renault), who had clashed with his team boss Frankie Vojtisek during the race. Otherwise the Czech would certainly have finished in a better place.
And then there was the start of the fateful Championship race. Precisely at the moment the pilots drove to the grid a torrential rain began to fall. More than 20 minutes the drivers had to stay on the starting straight, then they drove two green flag laps. There was hardly anybody who was not soaked to the skin by this time. And also on the track the water was some centimetres deep. Then the inevitable happened, already in the first bend from the starting line, the entire top group dashed straight ahead – some of them eliminating each other. Allgäuer crashed into the wall and damaged the front axle of his truck. Albacete took to the gravel and couldn’t manage to get out of it anymore. On Hahn’s truck the entire radiator area was torn open and it had broken wipers and there was a crack in the windscreen. The Buggyras skidded far off the track but managed to stay on the tarmac. They remained relatively undamaged and took up pursuit of the new top drivers. There ‘rain man’ Vojtisek had taken the lead and held it to the finish. Runner-up was Oliver after battling his way past the Spaniard Javier Mariezcurrena who later on fell back even further. Jean-Pierre Blaise, who pilots last year’s Adua MAN, was third for some time, but later was passed by Vrsecky, Bösiger and Belloc who meanwhile had fought their way back through the field and made up 10 to 15 places. Later Bösiger got a 25 seconds penalty – because of overtaking while the yellow flag was waved – and consequently fell back on sixth behind Belloc and Blaise. Next in the points were Mariezcurrena, Steve Horn (Mercedes Benz), Pascal Robineau (MAN) and Frank Conti (Volvo).
The overall standing is led by Frankie Vojtisek and Stuart Oliver (both 21 points), followed by David Vrsecky (19) and Markus Bösiger (16).