European Truck Racing / Truck Race Information Service

Countdown to the 2017 season: Team Schwabentruck

05. February 2017In 2017, Iveco-powered Team Schwabentruck will participate in its first full season in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship.
What started out eight years ago as a hobby enterprise – a clutch of truck racing enthusiasts inspired by Schorsch Glöckler, Iveco’s former head of training in Ulm – is now a top-flight competition outfit.
Its collaboration with Iveco has intensified in recent years, giving the team the confidence to set the bar several notches higher in 2017.
Thrice European champion Gerd Körber, a Schwabentruck regular ever since he first turned out for the team in the Mittelrhein Cup races at the 2010 Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring, has insisted he’s doing it simply for the joy of racing.
Indeed, that was the guiding principle for the entire team in its initial years – Glöckler had been a die-hard truckrace fan for over 25 years. With gathering successes the team set its goals progressively higher even as it grew ever more ambitious. Despite his own personal ambitions, however, Körber – an accomplished race truck constructor in his early career in the sport – wasn’t able to commit himself beyond what his duties as director of family-owned Bickel-Tec, a truck modification and bodybuilding enterprise in Rheinau-Helmlingen in southwestern Baden- Württemberg, would permit.
But the coming season is going to be Körber’s 30th, incentive enough for him to (once again) devote all his energies to the FIA ETRC. Add to that the new factory engagement by Iveco and the promising cooperation with Team Hahn Racing.
As we report this, the all-new Iveco Trucks are being built, one for Körber and another for defending quadruple-champ Jochen Hahn. The two compadres will also partner for the team championship.
At selected rounds they will be joined by Markus Altenstrasser in another Schwabentruck Iveco
All the chassis fabrication and painting of cabin and frame should be completed before the end of February. Final assembly and tuning will follow in March before the first shakedown tests in early April.
Everything’s been running to plan so far, but the Schwabentruck crew and their colleagues at Hahn Racing still have a fair bit of heavy lifting ahead of them.