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Friday in Zolder

Friday in Zolder

11. September 2009Zolder - Except for the almost deafening noise – close to the pain threshold – several GT and touring cars emitted during their additional training today, the evening before the start of the antepenultimate round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Zolder was quiet and peaceful. There was no exciting current subject under discussion, so that the topic ‘2010 season’ was broached. After all, MAN’s official statement that they will remain committed to truck racing means more planning certainty. Will there again be 10 rounds next year or will they compete in 9 rounds, and if so, which circuit should be given up; will there be an invitation race in eastern Europe or perhaps again a second race in Germany – those questions are on the truck racers’ minds at present, before they will get down to business tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.
All registered truck racers are meanwhile assembled in Zolder; the only guest drivers taking part are the Netherlander Erwin Kleinnagelvoort (Scania) and the French ex-champion Noël Crozier (MAN). And particularly the latter could succeed in giving the FIA pilots a hard time. Here in Belgium there will be a field of 22 starters on a 4 km course, yet many pilots worry that the annoying habit of driving very slowly in the first lap of the timed practice will continue even here, which in the past led several times to the situation that during their first quick lap the top pilots soon found themselves behind the tail-enders. Now a suggestion was made that the field should be split up into two – primarily more homogenous – groups for the timed practice. Maybe this procedure could be applied for the first time in the final round in Jarama, where there is always an impressive turnout of trucks because of the many Spanish pilots, as those races also count toward the Spanish Championship.
The weather was quite pleasant with a slightly overcast sky and temperatures around 20 °C (68 °F), and lots of fans strolled through the paddock and admired the lavish airbrush paintings on several trucks. In Zolder these beauties are only put on display, but generally they are used as everyday working vehicles.
But also one of the truck racers, Javier Mariezcurrena from the Spanish Team Truck Navarra Competición, treated himself to some airbrush paintings for his MAN tractor unit Here the Spaniard had his fellow combatants ‘immortalized’, naturally with his own MAN RaceTruck with the number 20 in front.
At 6:00 p.m. silence settles over Zolder and you could think you are in a place of pilgrimage, because now the track is reserved solely for the cyclists.