Season preparations 2016: Lion Truck Racing

01. February 2016Less than three months to the start of the 2016 truck racing season in Europe, we now look at the individual teams and where they’re at.
Like all the other participants in the European Truck Racing Championship, Lion Truck Racing from France is also neck-deep in preparations for the new season.
Last year Anthony Janiec and his team were the only full-season French participants. As we write this, chief engineer Pascal Calas and his merry men led by mechanics Nelson Flor and Mikael Derivaz are busy building several brand new race trucks in their workshops in Toulouse - not only MANs but, like they did in 2015, also a Renault. And as you might expect, they have a veritable warehouse of parts to draw from.
Team owner and truck race fanatic Patrick Folleas, boss of the large French logistics and transport company BFT, is amenable to racing in both the European championship and the French national championship, as in 2015. The exact allocation will be decided only just before the start of the season, because when it comes to his passion for truck racing, the successful businessman usually takes gut decisions on the spur of the moment.
Having the backing of his large business enterprise allows him extravagances such as being able to supplement the three-member core truck race team at any time with experienced and no less motorsport-mad employees from BFT, headquartered in Lyon.
The lion, the heraldic emblem of Lyon, is also the eponym of Folleas’ team, never mind that it is actually based in Toulouse. The heraldic animal of Toulouse, by the way, happens to be a lamb - not quite the right choice perhaps for a truck race outfit!

Impressions: