Friday, 29.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
The European champions for 2016

The European champions for 2016

26. November 2016In contrast to Fórmula Truck in Brazil, which runs almost the entire year from March through December, truck racing in Europe is more of a summer series – even if there was snow all around at the first round of the FIA championship’s 2016 season in Spielberg.
But beyond the ETRC, Europe’s truck racing tradition also runs deep in three national championships, all of which have now been decided, beginning with the Spanish one in Jarama, followed by the French in Albi at end-October, and the British in Brands Hatch in the first half of November.
The final British race may have brought the curtain down on track action for the year, but many teams and pilots continue to be engaged with exhibitions, PR events, and presentation ceremonies through the winter – for the FIA ETRC, in particular, another very special one in Vienna in the first week of December.
The Spanish championship is one of the oldest in truck racing, even if it involved just one weekend of racing this year, in Jarama. In years past there’ve been up to three FIA ETRC rounds in Spain alone, which all offered racers the opportunity to collect points for the national championship. In fact, points from the race in Nogaro too counted towards the Spanish series on a few occasions.
In 2005 the ETRC had a total of 55 entries, nine of them only from Portugal, seven from Spain, eight from Great Britain, and 13 from France! Today’s distinction between “full-season” and “race-by-race” didn’t exist then; all participants paid the same entry fee and all received the same appearance money – whether they took part in a single race weekend or the entire season irregardless.
In those years the races in Barcelona, Albacete, Nogaro, and Jarama would have fields of up to 34 race trucks. Just to get an idea of how crowded the tracks would be, remember that the significantly larger Nürburgring allows a maximum of only 26 trucks per race.
The FIA, primarily concerned with orderliness, introduced the category of the “full-season” pilot, compelling racers to participate in all rounds, albeit with the possibility to withdraw from two, so-called “jokers”. The alternative is to start race-by-race and pay a smaller entry fee for each round. But that entitles you to a smaller appearance fee, euphemistically described as “travel money”.
Not long after that the financial crisis hit, with all the economic consequences it brought onto the logistics industry on the Iberian peninsula.
This year only Eduardo Rodrigues of Portugal was in the fray out of a total of 16 Spanish and Portuguese pilots, and he took third place in the Spanish championship in his MAN truck. The champion was a German, Sascha Lenz, followed by Ellen Lohr, both also MAN.
The French championship developed rather differently. It’s true that MAN pilot Anthony Janiec was the only French full-season racer in the ETRC, but that’s probably because the Coupe de France Camions, organised by the French motorsport association FFSA, is extremely popular.
Two of the five race weekends – in Nogaro and Le Mans – were held as rounds of the FIA ETRC. But even the season-opener in Le Castellet and the finale in Albi evoked unbelievably large interest among the public and the media.
A total of 20 racers had registered, and Thomas Robineau was crowned champion. His nominally stronger-performing rival Anthony Janiec dominated all the races he started, but on the FIA championship weekends it’s only physically possible to concentrate on one of the two series, and Janiec’s choice was obviously the ETRC.
It’s much the same story between the FIA ETRC and the British championship – a racer cannot compete in both series concurrently with the same intensity. And so there was no full-season pilot in the ETRC from the Isles this year. MAN drivers Ryan Smith and Shane Brereton did start a few races, but their focus naturally lay on the British Championship, which Smith eventually won.
The British championship, run over nine rounds this year, contested by 29 pilots in two classes. At Brands Hatch on the first weekend of November Ryan Smith was crowned champion in Class A, and Volvo pilot Adam Bint won the lower-performance Class B.
A very special honour awaits four-times European champ Jochen Hahn. The winner of the FIA title this year has been invited to the FIA’s annual prizegiving gala in Vienna.

Impressions:

The European champions for 2016
The European champions for 2016
The European champions for 2016
The European champions for 2016
The European champions for 2016