Le Mans Preliminary Report
09. October 2013There’s no official entry list yet, less than three days before the first trucks take to the track at the Circuit Bugatti — so there’s no knowing how many trucks will start in the 10th and final round of the FIA European Truck Championship. Gerd Körber (Iveco) is certainly going to be there; the German ex-champion is only racing in four events this season and won’t miss the finale in Le Mans for anything. This is, after all, a circuit he counts as one of his favourites. Körber’s compatriot Steffi Halm will be there too with her yellow Lion MAN, but she’s not going to be driving in any of the FIA races. As the leader in the French national championship, she has excellent prospects of defending her title there instead.
The defending champ in the FIA ETRC, by contrast, is in the role of the follower. His Spanish MAN colleague Antonio Albacete has 11 points more to his account, and there are 60 still to be taken. Last year too Hahn was hardly confident going into the final round despite holding 29-point advantage. The memory of 2007 still seems to be playing on everybody’s minds. That year the Swiss Markus Bösiger (then in a Buggyra Freightliner) had come into the final weekend with a lead of more than 30 points, and everybody took it for granted that he would be crowned champion. He was too, but with a lead of only one point! And only after various protests and counter-protests was his status as champion finally endorsed that December.
Nobody wants to relive that episode. Since then, though, relations in the FIA ETRC have been harmonious all round. In any case, when the truck racers turn out in top form at the FIA prizegiving ceremony, everything is forgiven and forgotten.
But it’s going to be a close race between Albacete and Hahn, that much is certain — provided none of them drops out. Albacete will once again be piloting his teammate Markus Oestreich’s truck, and Oese will (if everything goes according to plan) return in the restored Cepsa MAN. Albacete is not allowed under the rules to switch back to his own truck, or else he will have to forfeit all his points. Hahn definitely holds a psychological advantage. His green-and-white Castrol MAN is on song, while Albacete is a tick slower in Oese’s truck than he’s been in his own. But whether Hahn can make up that 11-point deficit will only be seen on Sunday evening.
And then, the stresses of the weekend – and, indeed, of the entire season – behind them, everybody will once again relax. But it’s going to be difficult to top the mood at the party last Sunday evening at Jarama thrown by the MAN service team.
In this regard, a postscript to the Jarama This and That report. We’ve had a number of readers contact us because they didn’t find any pictures of the fête on truckracing.de / truckrace.info or on our “Truckracing Information” page on Facebook. Our reply is: there aren’t going to be any. This was an entirely private affair, and many of those present would be very unpleasantly surprised if they were to find pictures of their romps that evening.
However, since there were a lot of photographs, and even videos, shot with mobile phones, many of these will very likely surface on the Facebook pages of those who took them, and even on YouTube.
Impressions:
