Spielberg Preliminary Report

27. April 2016Spielberg - The truck racing fraternity is looking forward to the season-opener of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg this coming weekend with eager anticipation. After champion Norbert Kiss switched to tankpool24 over the winter, the question in everyone’s mind is whether the Hungarian will be able to continue at the level he finished the last season at. In Stefan Honens, team boss Markus Bauer has one of the most experienced – and successful – racetruck constructors in his employ. But with Kiss’s surprise addition to the team the bar has been set very high indeed, and the time available was too short to pull off a potential wonder. So don’t be surprised if Kiss isn’t a regular on the podium, at least for the first few races.
With Antonio Albacete and David Vršecký, both multiple champs, two giants have left the scene.
Vršecký has taken up new assignments with his Czech team Buggyra International — racing trucks in Asia and also working for Buggyra’s Dakar team. Albacete has sold all his equipment after “lifetime” sponsor Cepsa withdrew entirely from motorsport.
Be that as it may, it’s conceivable that the Spaniard and the Czech could feature as guest racers in individual rounds of the 2016 championship. The truck racing community is as close-knit as they get, and contacts and friendships here are for life.
Of the top five from last season only Jochen Hahn and Adam Lacko remain. On the face of it, these two are the most serious contenders for this year’s title — it would be Hahn’s fourth and Lacko’s first. Both German and Czech were totally diligent in their testing in both sessions at Most, but at the same time none left a clear impression of where they’ll stand.
MAN pilot Hahn expects Reinert Adventure teammate René Reinert to put up stiff competition. “René has a completely new and extremely fast truck,” Hahn tells us. He should know — he built Reinert’s MAN himself, and his crew is in the main responsible for its upkeep. The Lusatian businessman, now attacking his fifth year in the FIA ETRC, has made rapid strides over the seasons, and Hahn sees him as one of the top three finishers in the overall standings.
The third MAN from the Hahn workshops will once again be driven by Steffi Halm for Reinert Racing. The young German gets a newly built race truck, the one she collected the first win for a woman in the ETRC with last year having been sold to a customer in England.
Steffi partners compatriot Ellen Lohr, on the new WOW! Women on Wheels team in the points chase. The grande dame of truck racing continues in the cockpit of a Truck Sport Bernau MAN. In Spielberg, though, she will be without her teammate because Reinert Racing has decided to skip the Red Bull Ring to gain more time to work on Steffi’s MAN.
Anthony Janiec and Sascha Lenz make a rather unexpected pairing. The two MAN pilots gravitated to each other after Janiec’s 2015 teammate Kiss moved to tankpool24. The Hungarian’s new teammate this season is the second Mercedes pilot André Kursim.
Lion team boss Patrick Foleas had to search for a new partner for Janiec and found one in Sascha Lenz. Lacko too has a new partner in Jiří Forman, who replaces Vršecký in the cockpit of the Freightliner. The two together will be defending Buggyra’s team title.
Besides these 10 racers who’ve entered for the team championship, there are four more “soloists” who will race the full season, truckrace thoroughbreds every one.
Having restricted himself to a few rounds last year, thrice European champion Gerd Körber will compete for a full season. Czech Frankie Vojtíšek has been around even longer than the German, having switched from Renault to MAN a few years ago. Portuguese Eduardo Rodrigues, an MAN loyalist by contrast, who’s given us to understand that he is progressively withdrawing from his truck dealership business, seems to have serious ambitions in the sport. After all, it’s he who bought Albacete’s truck and equipment. Dutchman Erwin Kleinnagelvoort in his Scania rounds off the quartet.
The starting grid for the first race of the season will include home hero Markus Altenstrasser in the second Schwabentruck Iveco, and the two MAN pilots Ryan Smith (GBR) and Thomas Robineau (FRA), all as race-by-race entrants.
Who will come away from Spielberg with the most points is completely open. Equally imponderable is how the weather will be on the weekend, what with forecasts changing by the day.
A few days ago night temperatures of –7°C were predicted; at the moment it’s not as miserably cold. On Friday and Saturday it should stay dry, albeit lightly cloudy. For Sunday, however, the probability of rain is presently put at 60 percent. The night temperatures should hover around freezing, rising to 12–15° during the day.
The teams that have already arrived at the Red Bull Ring have experienced it all. Snowfall, rain, hail — and radiant sunshine in snatches.

Impressions: