Nogaro preliminary report

09. June 2016Nogaro - In the run-up to the 3rd round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Circuit Paul Armagnac in Nogaro, south France, there’s been lots to talk about on the topic of France.
Just to make it clear: none of this is of any consequence here in Nogaro.
The strikes across France a fortnight ago had bled many of the petrol stations dry and shut down electricity supply for extended periods in parts of the country. But there’s no evidence of that anymore.
Following violent storms over the last few days that caused massive mudflows in villages and towns across Europe, many of the sights in Paris city have been closed off because of floods and several roads and expressways in central France are no longer motorable.
Nogaro, however, has stayed sheltered from all of that, and the forecasts for the weekend are positive indeed, even if the weathermen here are hard put to make exact predictions.
And so the truck racers go into the third race weekend of the season with considerable confidence, and none more confidently than the two hottest contenders for the title, Jochen Hahn and Adam Lacko.
The German thrice-champion’s MAN and the Czech’s Buggyra Freightliner are – as the races in Misano demonstrated – at par in every way. So even a small nuance in setup, or a slight unevenness on the track, could decide which of the two finishes ahead.
Very close behind them (from a performance perspective) are the two Reinert Racing MANs driven by Steffi Halm and René Reinert. These two Germans are good for a podium place – or four, – and maybe even a race win or two. Halm in particular showed last year her mastery of this circuit, picked up over her time at Lion.
The same holds true for her successor in the Lion team, Frenchman Anthony Janiec. The MAN pilot is never easy to decipher, but in Nogaro you can expect him to be in great form.
And, not least, you can’t leave defending champ Norbert Kiss out of the reckoning.
The Hungarian and his new team, tankpool24, have been making such rapid strides with the new Mercedes race truck that – worryingly enough – it appears they won’t be reaching their limits anytime soon.
Circuit Paul Armagnac is totally new territory for Sascha Lenz. The young German hadn’t originally planned to race here, for cost reasons. But with his MAN on song so far, ambition has already gotten the better of him.
Nogaro has for years been one of the top rounds of the FIA ETRC, and no truck race enthusiast worth his or her salt can not have lived the Nogaro experience at least once.
In addition to the races of the European Championship there are those of the Coupe de France Camions, plus a huge parade of the most beautifully done-up trucks in France, lots of entertainment and pomp in the paddock, and – above all else – the convoy of the race trucks as their drivers take them for a spin into the town centre.
There are very few racetracks as “integrated” into their host communities as Circuit Paul Armagnac. The centre of this town of 3,000 souls is a short walk from the circuit, and the convoy is easily accessible to everyone to view.
The truck race weekend in Nogaro is as much a trademark of the Gascony as Charles de Batz de Castelmore (more famous as Musketeer Comte d’ Artagnan), foie gras, Floc de Gascogne, Armagnac, and the Way f St. James.