What now after MAN’s withdrawal?
22. February 2014MAN’s announcement that it will withdraw corporate support for the FIA Truck Racing Championship is no real surprise to insiders. We’ve been in a similar situation 10 years ago. MAN then towered over the competition and the complaint from the truckmaker’s Munich headquarters was that no other large competitor – the reference no doubt to the world’s largest truckmaker then, Mercedes-Benz, – would engage in the FIA ETRC, that MAN certainly did not want the European championship to become a one-make series. In the event, MAN race trucks had taken the top three places in the 2003 championship; in 2004 they’d gone on to take the top four. Even then the champions in Munich weren’t satisfied with the quality (and quantity) of the competition. But then, out of the blue, the Freightliners from Buggyra shot to prominence and even archrival Mercedes-Benz officially re-entered the ETRC.
In 2006 the MAN champion was joined on the championship podium by drivers from Freightliner and Mercedes. Over the next three years the Freightliners went on to monopolise the championship. The fact that this brand has been a part of Daimler since 1981, the cynics suggested, meant that the men from Stuttgart would be calling the shots. In actual fact, the brand with the star withdrew from the FIA ETRC completely. At times the impression one got was that truck racing was taboo in Stuttgart.
Instead, we saw a Renault resurgence. The MKR trucks made their mark — and made MAN’s life very difficult indeed. The Munich brigade armed itself heavily, pouring knowhow into its engine development. Last season the MANs again were as superior on the track as they were 10 years ago. But then Buggyra again provided a powerful demonstration of how a team with very limited means too could fight it out at the front — at the end the Freightliner was the MAN phalanx’s strongest opponent.
Even so, it was clear at the end of last season that, if no other manufacturer was going to step in, MAN would reconsider its long-standing engagement. The company indicated as much to its own teams, and its imminent withdrawal was more openly discussed at the sitting of the FIA Truck Race Commission in Paris last Monday and Tuesday.
Towards the middle of the week reports of MAN’s withdrawal were circulating on the company’s intranet and enquiries from the press received a confirmation in response from MAN’s press office. The reason given: “…following the withdrawal of Renault Trucks at the end of 2013 the sporting significance [of the ETRC] has diminished considerably.”
The fact is, the strongest competitor was no Renault but a Freightliner. And the French haven’t actually announced that they are abandoning the ETRC, only that their engagement is being “outsourced”, if you will, as a result of budget restrictions. Mario Kress and his MKR Technology team will take over responsibility for support to Renault trucks participating in the FIA ETRC, and that at a very high technical level. The teams may rest assured that the cooperation between MKR and Renault continues as intensively as heretofore.
Its massive superiority last year is ostensibly one aspect of the reason for MANs exit from the series. But what we could read between the lines and overhear as the season progressed was that, in both Lyon and Munich, the managers were a bit unhappy that they alone had to bear the financial burden of the FIA ETRC while all the other large manufacturers basked in the glow of the race events and showed their wares off with extravagant displays in the paddock, but conveniently refused to support the actual racing that gave the events their glamour. Over and over we heard them rail against the “freeloaders”.
But it’s still fair to say that MAN’s exit isn’t exactly premeditated — only last year the company invested in two new trailers for the service team, complete with the best in telemetry technology. And so while a few prophets of gloom have already pronounced the end of the FIA ETRC, the vast majority, even the participants themselves, a chance to break out of the stagnation that had threatened to swamp the series.
It’s not only a number of tuning outfits that see opportunity in the free choice of engine from the 2015 season onwards; Mario Kress and his MKR team, like Buggyra, which have both developed and built engines for trucks competing in the Rallye Dakar, see scope for more intensive activity when they no longer have to compete with the almighty development departments of the truckmakers themselves.
And so most insiders are convinced that the FIA ETRC will experience a new impetus. For one thing, the series will now be much more interesting for new sponsors, particularly from the aftermarket.
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