Misano This And That
29. May 2014You couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the FIA European Truck Racing Championship’s 2014 season — gorgeous weather (30°C in the shade and track temperatures in excess of 50°) at the Misano World Circuit and 38,000-plus spectators, a good 15 percent more than in the previous year. And this, mind you, even though the sponsors had invited far fewer guests on average than they’d done in 2013. Not to forget, too, that for ages Italy hasn’t produced a local hero in the ETRC who could draw the crowds. The tifosi just don’t consider a German, even if he be “Mr Truckracing” Gerd Körber in an Italian Iveco, an acceptable substitute.
All said and done, in this first year after the official withdrawal of Renault and the announcement by MAN of its intention to pull out of the ETRC, we’re actually seeing pretty much the opposite of what the pessimists had prophesied. Truck racing is alive - and kicking!
The MAN race trucks continue to be the measure of all things, at least those with the A-spec engines. But just how soon fortunes can change was evident in the weekend’s final race. Nobody would have wagered beforehand on the outcome, two Czechs, David Vršecký and Adam Lacko, in Buggyra Freightliners ahead of an MAN — not Jochen Hahn’s (GER), nor Antonio Albacete’s (ESP) nor Markus Bösigers (SUI), nor even Norbert Kiss’s (HUN), but the German René Reinert’s, a truck without the top-flight engine his big-name colleagues can afford. Painful for the favourites, of course, but good for the sport.
Kiss for his part was already in impressive form. The impetuous Hungarian has the makings of a high-flyer, but could do with a bit more consistency. In that department at least, Hahn and Albacete are streets ahead. But all racers have tunnel vision — and when the podium is all you’ve set your sights on, even a very experienced driver can sometimes make a spur-of-the-moment move that they in retrospect question the wisdom of. In the second race, for example, Hahn could have won seven points more had he contented himself with 4th place and not attempted to grab third from Bösiger at the last moment.
But then Körber wouldn’t have made it onto the podium. For him and for the Schwabentruck team, this must have been the biggest surprise, considering that Körber’d had to start from the rear because of his retirement in the earlier race. All in all, a wonderful birthday present for the man from Rheinau.
It’s these unexpected twists that make truck racing so interesting. For examples of how quickly a race can get real boring, look no further the so-called pinnacle of motorsport.
But there were also fewer happy faces at Misano this year.
The tankpool24 Mercedes pilot André Kursim (GER) must have been terribly frustrated that a tick bite should ruin the start of his season. Ellen Lohr (GER) was no less unfortunate. First off, she wasn’t able to get her MAN up to race pace, and then when she finally took to the track on Sunday, it was all over for her after just one race. If a broken brake disc in the first lap wasn’t frustrating enough, Lohr had the ignominy of crashing into the second tankpool24 Mercedes of her former colleague Dominique Orsini (FRA), which had just survived a collision with the Renault of the Portuguese José Sousa with some damage, putting both, MAN and Mercedes, out of the race.
A topic of discussion, and provocation withal, was the numerous penalties handed down in the form of drive-throughs or additions to elapsed time to drivers (supposedly) observed having knocked over the track markers. These orange plastic uprights are intended to prevent the racers from cutting corners — an excellent intention, except that the way they were monitored left much to be desired. This, of course, is the job of the track marshals. Question is, are they really in a position to do it justice? It’s extremely difficult, when confronted with a thundering tumult of stampeding race trucks, to determine just which one(s) exactly knocked down a marker, especially when all that’s observable is thousands of fragments of orange plastic flying in every direction.
Impressions:
