Race trucks at the Essen Motor Show

06. December 2015Every year at the beginning of Advent the Ruhr metropolis of Essen turns into a mecca for motorsport fans of every stripe and tuning freaks from all over Europe. The 100,000sq.m. Essen fairground regularly attracts up to 350,000 pilgrims at this season, many of them fans of truck racing. This year the two 2015 race trucks driven by Jochen Hahn and Sascha Lenz, and the Mercedes-Benz of Heinz-Werner Lenz, supported by the organisers of the Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring, represented the most popular FIA racing series in Europe next to Formula 1, the European Truck Racing Championship.
The younger visitors took the opportunity to clamber into the cockpits of the 5,5 tonne machines, only to realise right away how little in common they have with a normal roadgoing truck.
The closest the race trucks correspond to their series-built everyday counterparts is in their length and width, and that’s something both Jochen Hahn and Heinz-Werner Lenz were clearly mindful of at the weekend as they manoeuvred the track monsters through the throng from the exhibition area to the drift arena in Hall 7, where they then proceeded to unleash their 1,200hp beasts in front of the delighted fans.
The course, laid out for touring cars, might have been a bit too tight even for Germany’s two most successful German truck racers with three European championships apiece (apart, of course, from Gerd Körber, who’s also a thrice-champion) to demonstrate the full power of their trucks, but they nevertheless made a deep impression with their drifts, and definitely won the sport quite a few more fans.

Impressions: