Friday, 29.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
Hahn makes an Italian connection

Hahn makes an Italian connection

11. October 2016Team Hahn Racing celebrated its 20th year in the FIA ETRC earlier this year, and in all these years it has had only two manufacturer partners – Mercedes-Benz for the first 11 years and MAN for the last nine. The Swabian outfit from the Black Forest will switch to a new partner for its third decade in the sport – Iveco.
Despite the new Italian connection, everything about the new Hahn operation will remain dyed-in-the-wool German — with a particularly Swabian accent, given that Iveco’s historic German branch location Ulm is only 140-odd kilometres to the east. Trucks built for customer teams will in all probability continue to be MAN-based.
The quadruple European champ is much sought after, and he’s had a number of prospective partners to choose from. There’s no denying that he’s achieved everything in truck racing that it’s possible to achieve.
Now his vistas lie beyond the thrill of racing a truck; the bantam from Altensteig is looking for new challenges – he wants to set something up and put it in motion, he wants to keep developing (trucks), he’s got any number of ideas he’d like to realise, he’d love to set a trend – simply put, Jochen Hahn lives and breathes truck racing.
The two prospective partners have had intensive discussions in recent weeks. At the IAA in Hanover, Hahn reportedly set out his ideas in passionate detail, and it didn’t take Iveco president Pierre Lahutte long to respond with: “Yes, let’s do it.”
Iveco was committed, but the two sides agreed to keep the relationship under wraps and only officially announce it after the finale in Le Mans.
From next season the former Fiat affiliate will corporately support two teams in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. Besides Team Hahn, it will now actively back Team Schwabentruck, led by Schorsch Glöckler, the team that actually established the marque in the sport with minimal technical assistance from the manufacturer.
Glöckler, who’s been a part of Hahn’s plans from the outset, views Team Hahn Racing not as an unwelcome competitor but quite the opposite. Both teams will collaborate closely, and now that Project Truck Racing has taken on strategic significance at Iveco, Glöckler’s small band of die-hard enthusiasts only stands to benefit from the new arrangement.

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Hahn makes an Italian connection
Hahn makes an Italian connection
Hahn makes an Italian connection