Godspeed, Ross Garrett

10. January 2014Ross Garrett succumbed to cancer at his home in England this morning. He was 60.
A mainstay of the European truck racing scene, Ross was, foremost, very British. He first took part in the European Championship in 1994 — naturally, as you might expect, in a – very English – right-hand-drive Foden, a truck that was as rare in truck racing as they come. Even so, the Englishman was able to make it to fourth place overall in the 2003 championship, the best result of his career. Three years later Foden went out of production, after a history spanning 150 years. The end of his beloved brand probably had less to do with his decision to bury his racing ambitions at the end of that season than the fact that he also had a large transport company to run. But once infected by the truckrace virus there’s no getting free of it — and Ross too returned to action, not once but twice.
When Czech driver Frankie Vojtíšek suddenly took ill at the start of the 2007 season, there was no question of Garrett not standing in for his close friend till he could get back behind the wheel. The Frankie Renault Team pulled out all the stops to welcome Garrett to his first race in a left-hand-drive truck, a kind he was totally unaccustomed to, appropriately — even affixing a “ Ross this is the wrong side” to the door on the right.
That September Garrett drove his last truck race in Misano (Circuit Zolder and the Italian racetrack had swapped dates in 2007). And when, at the end of the 2009 season, Fabien Calvet gave up his post as the FIA’s technical delegate to be able to focus his energies on establishing the Truck Racing Organisation (TRO) and, as FIA coordinator to devote himself entirely to the management of European truck racing, Ross was sounded out and it didn’t take much persuading him, because once infected…!
Garrett knew everything and everyone, was much loved all round, and was always on the best of terms with the teams. At times when the teams were at odds with the governing body over differences of interpretation of the technical regulations, these arguments were always settled amicably. And so it was with horror that the truck race community reacted to Ross’s announcement that he was suffering from cancer. Even so, he carried on with his responsibilities as technical delegate unperturbed, always supported – very ably – by his wife Sue. As recently as the end of the 2013 season Ross Garrett appeared to all of us a very picture of health, which is why the news of his passing comes as such a nasty shock.
The truckracing.de / truckrace.info team has been closely associated with Ross Garrett, a man you’d never ever guess was a truck racer, let alone even a trucker, for almost 20 years now. We’ve chronicled his entire racing career from before he was a driver, and his rise to team manager and then teamowner, for him in photographs and on his Website. Over this period we’d developed a very special relationship with a very special man.

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