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Jarama This and That

Jarama This and That

09. October 2013The championship-winner will only now be decided at the final round of the European Truck Racing Championship in Le Mans. The team title, however, has already been taken by Truck Sport Lutz Bernau, whose pilots Antonio Albacete (ESP) and Markus Oestreich (GER) together have an unassailable lead in the standings. The fact was almost completely forgotten in the tension surrounding the weekend’s events, even though Lutz Bernau had brought T-shirts correspondingly emblazoned to celebrate with at Jarama. But there was no mood in the Bernau camp for celebration after the pile-up on Saturday afternoon that took out Albacete’s Cepsa MAN and six other trucks, and the arguments that arose when it came to getting the other teams to consent to Albacete using teammate Oestreich’s truck. The whole back-and-forth over the necessary signatures caused long-held resentments to surface that one would never have imagined existed in the big, happy truckrace family. But it’s the same in truck racing as in any family or marriage — you may not agree on some things, but you hold to one another nevertheless. From time to time the cup brims over and it gets unpleasant. That’s the way it was on Saturday evening.
Unfortunately Lutz Bernau’s team had to pack up directly after Sunday’s final race so that they could hit the road to Le Mans and the workshops of Pascal and Olivier Robineau, to start work anon on restoring the Number 2 Cepsa MAN. The Robineau brothers are truckrace longtimers themselves and the Robineau family is now represented in the sport by the second generation, Jeremy and Thomas. Here once again was a good example of the close bonding in the truckrace family, where in fact everybody is always ready to help everybody else. The early departure meant the team – with the exception of Michael, the junior Bernau who flew home directly from Madrid on Monday morning, – missed a memorable evening. The controversies of the day before all forgotten, the MAN service team threw a lavish party that all who attended will remember for years to come.
With help from several Spanish friends the crew from Nuremberg served up a professional barbecue, with a Spanish chef naturally, and beverages flowed freely. But it was the entertainment that boosted everyone’s spirits — to begin with, a live band playing covers of hits from the Police and other rock bands from that period perfectly suited to the truck racers’ sensibilities. Past midnight, MAN service team chief Artur Klein unveiled an extremely lissome dancer. The sun was rising over Madrid when the last of the guests departed. Those who left earlier were struggling to sober up so that they could start preparing their trucks for the season finale on the Circuit Bugatti. Nearly all the teams will be travelling directly to Le Mans and wanted to make the maximum of the splendid weather in the Spanish capital. The forecasts for Le Mans are the pretty much the opposite.

Impressions:

Jarama This and That
Jarama This and That