Jarama – Preliminary Report

30. September 2009Jarama - The final round of the FIA Truck Racing Championship will be much more exciting than in the years before, because the major points scorers are separated by a few points only. David Vrsecky is leading the Championship with a slender 10 points advantage over Antonio Albacete. Last year the Czech Buggyra pilot was 18 points clear of Markus Bösiger, his Swiss team mate, and had not to reckon with any fierce attacks. In 2007 the Swiss had a 26 points advantage at the top of the championship ranking before the final race, but finally – after a constant back and forth – he took the crown by a margin of just 1 point ahead of Antonio Albacete. In 2005 and 2006 the Spaniard was the title holder – in 2005 he had already enough points to secure the championship after the penultimate round and arrived at the final as the designated winner, and in the following year his nearest rival, Gerd Körber, was 32 points behind, but after the final race the German had only moved 4 points closer to the Spaniard.
And now there is a difference of a mere 10 points, although in Jarama Albacete would have to gain at least 11 points more than the Czech, as Vrsecky holds by far the greatest number of first places obtained in the races, which would be the crucial factor in case of a dead heat. On the other hand, Jarama is ‘Albacete-country’, the Madrilenian knows every stone and every pothole; his victories in Jarama are innumerable, and he often won all four races of the weekend. And Vrsecky – he never managed a 1st place finish in Jarama. And in recent years Buggyra never won a race there – the last one who claimed victory there was Gerd Körber in a SuperRaceTruck way back in 2003. Regardless of who is going to win the championship, the event will again be a festival in red, because the weekend in Jarama is always the main event for Albacete’s sponsor Cepsa.
But of course not only the local hero and Vrsecky will take part. A total of 30 trucks are registered – the entire FIA squad except for Jean-Pierre Blaise, plus 10 race-by-race pilots, because the points gained there count also towards the Spanish Championship. Considering the great number of RaceTrucks it was certainly the right decision to split the trucks into 2 groups for the timed practice in order to minimize the risk that in consequence of the slow pace in the warm-up lap the top pilots in their first quick lap will already find themselves stuck behind some tail-enders. However, it could become a bit of a problem if during the timed practice, which takes about 45 minutes, the track conditions would change drastically. That’s why for the coming year there are plans to have a totally different kind of timed practice. As before, all the pilots will try to clock as fast a lap as possible within 20 minutes. Then the 10 fastest drivers will reassemble in the pit lane under parc fermé conditions – which means that it is not allowed to make any adjustments to the truck; no water or diesel refilling or changing of a defective tyre etc. – and then there will be a 10 minute session to determine the first 10 places on the starting grid. At least all the pilots could clock their times under the same track conditions in the respective sessions.
And also at the end of the season the weather gods seem to mean well for the truck racers. A slightly overcast sky, the risk of rain being virtually zero, and temperatures rising above 25 °C (77 °F) – and at times maybe even around 30 °C (86 °F) – those are conditions as good as can be.