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Retrospective Review

Retrospective Review

06. January 2009For the truck racers several things took some getting used to in 2008. With only two committed companies left, MAN and RENAULT, and the RaceTruck manufacturer Buggyra with their FREIGHTLINERS – that was not the wide range of brands the truck racers would have liked to have. But luckily there are many private drivers, although – as a rule – they have to manage without any help from the part of a car manufacturer. Besides two FREIGHTLINERS, three RENAULTS, and twelve MANs there were also 2 DAF trucks on the entry list, plus an IVECO, a SCANIA and a VOLVO. And also the world’s biggest manufacturer of commercial vehicles, MERCEDES-BENZ, was presented with three trucks – albeit non-officially and privately. Steve Horne and José Bermejo with their trucks that both belonged to Jochen Hahn formerly even teamed up for the team championship. In the drivers ranking Horne got four points with the very RaceTruck Hahn drove when he achieved fourth position in the Championship in 2007 with 291 points. After his switch to MAN the Swabian could even better his result – in a vehicle he was totally unfamiliar with – and again he gained 4th place in the overall ranking, scoring even 14 more points than the year before. Despite the fact that he had more points he could not move up in the ranking – maybe a sign that there is a trend that the responsible people rather wanted to counteract; the points are distributed among fewer and fewer pilots.
While in 2007 there were 23 pilots who managed to get points, last season the number was reduced to 19. The same applies to the top drivers where there is a concentrated scoring of points. In 2008 the pilots holding the positions 1 to 5 in the overall ranking secured more than 70 per cent of the total number of 2,448 points; in the year before the percentage was only 67. It’s true that almost always only a few of the pilots divided up the podium places and the lion’s share of the points among themselves, but ever so often the pilots from the second half of the starter field are the ones who are very popular with the fans because of their fighting spirit and their spectacular driving style.
In order to offer an enticement in sporting terms to those drivers, the pilots’ representative body on the truck racing committee suggested at the beginning of last year that, in future, points should be given to the pilots finishing in the first 15 positions instead of 10 positions. But as it was too late to implement this change for the upcoming season, the Challenge Cup was brought into being at short notice – on the initiative of Lutz Bernau. Entitled to participate were only pilots who were rookies in truck racing or those drivers who were not listed among the top ten in the overall standing of the previous season.
But according to the reforms coming into effect now, (see report “New Regulations”, dated Dec. 8, 2008) the practice to award points up to 10th place will be retained. For details of the FIA’s publication please click “TruckRacing” – (FIA-Veröffentlichungen für Fahrer, Teams und Medien) on this website.
Because of the change with regard to the starting grid for the second race – the first eight pilots classified in race 1 will line up in reverse order for race 2 – the fight for the podium will certainly be more exciting, but the major part of the – as a rule – 26 FIA pilots will remain relatively unaffected by the change. Their chances to gain points for the championship will not increase. So it will be all the more important that with the Challenge Cup those drivers can establish a basis where their ranking will be seen. Markus Altenstrasser, however, will not be able to defend his title now. Being on 6th position in the championship ranking the Austrian does no longer fulfil the qualifications: he is too far ahead – by five positions.