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Truck Racing at the Essen Motor Show

Truck Racing at the Essen Motor Show

22. November 2010Every year during the pre-Christmas season – when the city of Essen is illuminated by more than half a million lights with fantastic images shining out over the city centre in the darkness – the metropolis in the Ruhr district turns into the Mecca of the motorsport fans for more than a week: the Essen Motor Show which will be held from November 27 until December 5 this year. In principal every truck racing fan is also a motorsport enthusiast, so that at the motor show he can kill two birds with one stone. There will be more than 500 exhibitors in 18 exhibition halls with a total of about 110,000 square metres; virtually everybody who is anybody in the motorsport and tuning scene will be present. And this year the most successful FIA motorsport series except for the Formula One – the FIA European Truck Racing Championship – will again be presented big-time. It’s the best opportunity to get a close look at the five and a half ton RaceTrucks “live and in colour” and to have a one-to-one talk with the pilots and/or the team bosses. Contrary to other FIA series, in truck racing the paddock is always open to the public, but when you meet the championship protagonists during a race weekend they are hardly as relaxed and at ease as they will be at the motor show in Essen.
Of course the MAN of the new champion, Antonio Albacete from Spain, will be on display, and team boss Lutz Bernau will certainly be available to answer questions. And Germany’s top pilot and third-placed in the ETRC, Jochen Hahn, is going to be in Essen, too, with his Black-MAN. The Swabian is a real down-to-earth person with no fears of contact – not only on racetrack – and he will be pleased to meet with many of his numerous fans.
The crème de la crème of the truck racers would not be complete without the
European champions of the previous years, David Vrsecky and Markus Bösiger as well as Markus Oestreich, the last champion in the SuperRaceTruck series.
While the Czech driver Vrsecky – after two title wins in a row – wasn’t that lucky in the past season and eventually had to settle for 5th position with his Buggyra Freightliner, the Swiss pilot Markus Bösiger – Vrsecky’s predecessor as title holder – and his team mate Markus Oestreich both gave an unforeseen top performance in their brand-new Renault trucks, and they not only leap-frogged to 2nd and 4th place, resp. in the overall standing, but won also the team championship for MKR Renault.
And also the third “M” of the “3M Team” (Markus, Markus, Mario), MKR boss Mario Kress – the father of the success – will be present. The man from Baden, residing in the Czech Republic, is the most successful RaceTruck constructor in the world. He and other members of his team will certainly be available in Essen to answer all the questions asked by their fans.
And, last but not least, Sascha Lenz – scion of an upcoming truck racing dynasty – is going to present the latest Mercedes RaceTruck which was, by the way, constructed by Jochen Hahn and his team. At the Truck Grand Prix on the Ring Sascha’s father Heinz-Werner had been piloting this truck, but in future the three time European Truck Racing champion wants to leave the cockpit to his offspring more often in order to attend to “backstage” work himself.