Zolder – Preliminary Report

08. September 2009There are 3 rounds of the Championship still to contest, and each pilot can still get 180 points in the ideal case – in the current championship standing the front-runner holds a 107 points lead over the fourth placed. Certainly Jochen Hahn – the pilot with the fewest points in the leading quartet – will no longer have any serious hopes of winning the title. Should one of his opponents lying ahead of Hahn ‘nosedive’ in the remaining rounds, there would still be two others closer to the title. On the other hand he knows from his own painful experience in 2006, how fast a points lead can evaporate. After the races in Most the man from Altensteig was regarded as the odds-on favourite, but in the last three rounds he collected only 74 points, while his closest rival, Antonio Albacete, grabbed almost twice as many points and won the title, and Hahn had to content himself with third place.
In 2007 Markus Bösiger even had an advantage of 26 points before the final round in Jarama. But after some dramatic incidents in the final races, where the Swiss had more mechanical problems than in all the races of that season before, the Buggyra pilot retained the championship lead over Albacete of one single point. But this season the Spaniard with his red MAN is not the hunter but the hunted. He is only 15 points ahead of title holder David Vrsecky.
While the Czech probably can count on his team mate Bösiger not to make his life difficult at crucial moments, Albacete will be in for attacks from all his opponents, because MAN colleague Hahn does only drive the same make of car, but they are not in the same team. And how determined the pilots are to fight for every single point, that became evident by watching the battles in Most and also the duels between Hahn and his Austrian MAN colleague Egon Allgäuer, where it became quite obvious: being under contract to the same car manufacturer does not at all mean that there will be mutual consideration on the track.
There were times when in Zolder the winner had already been determined. But this time the last three rounds of the season, beginning in Belgium, will again be as exciting as in the years before. The top pilots’ level of performance is almost equal. They are all capable of beating each other; and there are two more MAN drivers, Allgäuer and Chris Levett, who in the last races kept popping up regularly in the mirrors of the leading quartet. And there is also Markus Altenstrasser – at present the most successful Renault pilot. After his ill-starred weekend in Most, where he was unable to get any points, the Austrian will certainly try to prove in Most that he is still the best pilot of those not driving a MAN or Buggyra.
Perhaps many spectators were surprised that the positions in midfield are at least as fiercely contested as the podium places. It’s being lost a bit in the public awareness and in the media, but it has to do with the points for the Sponsor Challenge Cup. In this contest all those pilots take part who were not among the top ten in the overall ranking the year before, and of course this applies also to all the newcomers in the FIA ETRC. At present the Hungarian Balasz Szobi (MAN) is heading the table.
For many German truck racing fans Zolder is a kind of ‘home race’, as for people from the Ruhr district and for visitors who live a bit further to the north this is the closest circuit to home. A total of 22 pilots are registered. But Jochen Hahn will be the only pilot flying the flag for Germany. Heinz-Werner Lenz, who had planned to start as race-by-race pilot, will not be there. But instead, surprisingly, another ex-champion will take part, Noël Crozier. For the MAN pilot from the northernmost part of France it’s only a short journey to Zolder, and probably he will see these races as a ‘warm-up’ for the crucial round in the French Championship a week later in Le Mans, because there the several times champion currently shares the lead with Yvan Gaillard, who – with his Freightliner he bought from Buggyra this year – already gained some points in the FIA races as a guest driver.
The weather forecast for Thursday, the teams’ day of arrival: rather cloudy with temperatures of about 15 °C (59 °F) and a rain probability of 50 – 85 percent, with gusty winds. For Friday the weather services predict the sunniest day of the weekend, although the temperatures will not rise above 20 °C (68 °F). Only occasionally there will be some clouds, but it will stay dry. For Saturday the forecast is a bit less favourable. The sky will be overcast, with some rain now and then. On Sunday there will only be a scattered cloud cover and the temperatures will be around 20 °C or a bit more.