Thursday, 28.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
The tests in Most

The tests in Most

21. April 2017The first shakedowns of the trucks that will race in this year’s FIA European Truck Racing Championship took place, as in recent years, at Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic. Participation in the test days was enthusiastic, with nine teams, 11 trucks, and 15 drivers taking Jochen Hahn up on his invitation to what’s now become an annual pre-season tradition.
Even if some initially weren’t certain the trip would be worth the considerable effort battling the hostile elements just to get here, all were very satisfied with what they’d achieved at the end of it all.
It’s true that the weather was most forbidding at the outset. Most of the teams encountered severe blizzards and, in stretches, highways completely snowed over. Only 20 km from Autodrom Most, 20 cm of fresh snow covered the foothills of the Ore Mountains.
In the event, nobody needed worry about the weather – sure, it was freezing, the night temperatures well below zero, and unpleasantly windy with snow off and on. But none of that proved the slightest impediment to testing. While track temperatures between 5° and 7°C weren’t what you’d expect underfoot at a race weekend, the primary objective here wasn’t​ to set lap records but to get the trucks to run in as fine a state of tune as they’d need to in an actual race.
…which the two German pilots Sascha Lenz and Gerd Körber unfortunately couldn’t. The thrice champion and his Schwabentruck team were laid low Wednesday afternoon by what he initially reported over the radio as damage to the clutch on his Iveco – laborious to repair, but do-able. The team was hopeful they’d get the truck back on track the next morning for a full day’s worth of testing, the weather forecast for Thursday being significantly brighter. But on closer examination in the paddock the damage was found to be far greater than they’d first imagined. The clutch defect had caused knock-on damage to both, transmission and crankcase, and the team decided it would be wise to ship the entire powertrain to FPT Motorenforschung in Arbon, Switzerland, for a detailed checkup. Of course, the thought that it had broken down here, some three weeks before, and not at the season-opener in Spielberg, was of no small consolation to Team Schwabentruck.
MAN pilot Sascha Lenz meanwhile experienced a mechanical failure that cost him the better part of the first day, but at least in his case the damage to the steering gearbox could be repaired on site. The team hadn’t brought a spare along, and so one had to be rushed in from home base in the Eifel. That was accomplished in cinematic fashion by one member driving in a car in the direction of Most while another went out from here to meet him. The handoff took place midway, and before we knew it the team was swapping the new box in. That should have been a cinch – in more temperate conditions. Here it took all hands on the job till late into the night. While the mechanics went to work with their spanners, the other members of the team trained spot lamps and radiation heaters on them so their fingers wouldn’t freeze.
The hard work paid off; Lenz was able to get in a full day of testing with no problem at all.
Except for these two, none of the others had any problems that we know of – or if they did, they weren’t letting on. Certainly not quadruple champion Jochen Hahn; the bantam from Altensteig was the most industrious of the lot, and his new Iveco appeared flawless as he went at his laps without letup. The circuit was crawling with augurs, stopwatches in hand, who all insisted that Hahn wasn’t all that far off his top times from last season despite the slippery track surface.
His presumptive top rival Adam Lacko and the all-Czech Buggyra team were cagey likewise. The Freightliner appeared to be having a problem-free run.
Twice champ David Vršecký makes his return to the team in the second panther-snouted race truck – victory in the Indian T1 Prima Championship has evidently aroused the old fighting spirit in him. Vršecký drove fewer test laps here in Most than we’d expect him to; the emphasis was on tryouts for two new pilots who could potentially feature in the occasional race as guest participants.
Having travelled here with Lutz Bernau’s squad, pai e filho Eduardo and José Rodrigues took turns in the MAN with competition number 11. The Portuguese family has big plans for this season. Eduardo’s grandson José Eduardo will race his avô’s truck in Zolder, Le Mans, and Jarama, while Eduardo himself will field a third MAN from the extensive Rodrigues fleet in the final round in Spain – so that, as they did last season, all three generations can race together once again.
Antonio Albacete makes his much anticipated return to the sport at the wheel of the Truck Sport Bernau MAN, which ran like Black Forest clockwork in Most. Lutz Bernau doesn’t rate his team’s title chances this season very highly, but those who know the Bavarian like we do also know that he’s a master of understatement. In addition to testing, the team was also engaged in shooting for a TV magazine with Finnish rally legend Markku Alén.
The tankpool24 team ran only one of its Mercedes trucks at Most, the one that will be raced by Norbert Kiss. The focus being on maximising engine performance, the entire test programme accordingly was geared to this objective, Kiss coming in at regular intervals for tweaks to the engine and control software. At the end of each day, the on-track telemetry data were analysed in minute detail.
On Thursday the teams were joined by Mario Kress and three customer MKR Renaults he’d brought along – two belonging to the Portuguese​ drivers José Teodosio and José Sousa, and the Team 14 truck, which this year will be driven by Gregory Ostaszewski. The young Pole, initiated into truck racing back in 2013 in one of Frankie Vojtíšek’s MANs, will race in the Coupe de France Camions this season, like Teodosio and Sousa. The Renaults were – fortuitously – in the MKR workshops only 50 km away for pre-season service, and Kress used the opportunity to have the pilots track-test their setups rightaway.

Impressions:

The tests in Most
The tests in Most
The tests in Most
The tests in Most
The tests in Most
The tests in Most
The tests in Most