Misano – This and That

27. May 2010It was like a thunderbolt right at the opening of the season. A totally new truck, a new team and a win at the first go-off – although, admittedly, with a very experienced pilot. Whoever you talked to, the general tenor was unequivocal: this weekend was a promotion of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. Besides MAN and Buggyra Freightliner there is now a third brand that is always a good bet for a victory. And also the experiment – to have no additional race series scheduled other than truck racing – was very successful; at least in view of the number of spectators. A crowd of 30,000 attended the races which is almost one third more than the previous year. And even the weather gods cooperated; on both days there was a brilliant blue sky. The super pole proved successful at the first go, although this regulation should perhaps be made a bit more transparent for the audience. In fact, the positions were already determined before the visitors seemed to have grasped what was going on. Because, if the 10 fastest pilots from the Q1 of the timed practice ‘put all their eggs in one basket’ everything will centre upon not more than two fast laps, which will be rather unspectacular as each pilot will, of course, try to get as much ‘space’ as possible, so that the spectators get the impression they are watching an individual time trial. However, it’s important to convey to the audience that this is really very exciting and that the times keep tumbling. But this was new territory.
At least equally interesting for the fans was the varied and extensive range the industry and manufacturers of commercial vehicles presented – including the partners of „truckracing.de / truckrace.info“, MAN, Renault, and DKV. All in all, it was a totally successful event.
There was, however, just one small ‘drop of bitterness’ – the moment when the race was stopped on Saturday evening. After the crash involving Markus Oestreich (Renault), Antonio Albacete (MAN) and David Vrsecky (Freightliner) quite a few pilots would have preferred to wait for the track to be cleaned and to be able to restart the race afterwards. When confronted by some people with the fact that a day with one race only was a novelty, TRO chairman Fabien Calvet answered with a twinkle in his eye, that once there was a racing day with no race at all, referring to the foggy Sunday at the TGP on the Ring in 2002.
However, the race business wasn’t neglected, and Markus Bösiger’s surprising triumph in his new MKR Renault left its mark on the event. As the Swiss had been driving with a handicap – a fractured right hand – several people certainly wondered how fast Bösiger might be once the fracture is mended. On the other hand, after this brilliant start to the season, the ‘3 M Team’ (Markus, Markus, Mario) raised high-wrought expectations, so that probably the MKR Team will no longer be that relaxed and at ease (‘we have nothing to lose’) when tackling the next races.
While at first it seemed as if Germany, the country with the largest production of commercial vehicles, would be totally underrepresented in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, there are now, after the first round, already three German(-speaking) pilots – Markus Bösiger, Jochen Hahn and Markus Oestreich – in the top-five overall ranking.
A delegation of the Russian Motorsports Association was also in Misano in order to do PR work for the race in Smolensk. At the moment it seems that a truck racing event will be held there, but whether it will be a championship race, remains to be seen. What has to be sorted out by all means is the matter of the travel arrangements; at present different options are under discussion.
All the well-known TV teams were in Misano, but so far there is no information available about the broadcast dates, except for the cable TV channel ‘schweiz 5’ which is only receivable in Switzerland.