Most This And That
08. September 2019We had an unusual weekend alright at Autodrom Most, as the second half of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship kicked off. The still heat of summer on Friday and Saturday persisted till noon on Sunday – only to give way to a tempest. What then transpired is described in detail in our second report from that day.
“Don’t look to the left or right, know no friend or foe, and let this one thought drive you – he who brakes, loses!” This might be the only way to succeed in the extremely competitive world of top-flight motorsport, but certainly not the best advice in the circumstances. The truck racers were quick to realise this. Altogether unlike their Citroën DS3 Cup colleagues, who raced in similar conditions in Denmark a week later, where about a dozen of them ended up in the gravel, the tyre barrier, and the Armco, all at the same corner. In Most, except for a few off-track excursions in the curves, everything – and everyone – stayed on the rails. It took almost no time for the racers and the stewards to determine their limits on a track that was awash for the most part.
Visitors to the blue Goodyear marquee in the paddock never fail to ask whether the race tyres on display, with only two suggestions of grooves around their circumferences, are slicks or rain tyres. There’s always surprise on the fans’ faces when they are told that there is only this one tread pattern in truck racing – for dry and wet surfaces.
Whereas a normal passenger car tyre has a tread depth of up to 8 mm when new, the grooves on a truck tyre are usually between 13 and 20 mm deep, depending on the application for which the tyre is designed. But the Goodyear truck race tyres have shallow grooves you can run your fingertips around. The tread on a normal truck tyre can displace many times the volume of water that a racing tyre can. Moreover, large semitrailer tractors like the FIA pace truck weigh at least a couple of tonnes more than a race truck. That explains why, on the final two attempts at a formation lap, the Mercedes Actros effortlessly steered through the chicanes, some of them submerged under several centimetres of water, while the race trucks behind it slid all over the place and simply couldn’t keep up. In such conditions, Antonio Albacete and Steffi Halm told TV crews during the long intervals, “you’re just a passenger”.
The decision to cancel the races, consequently, had unanimous support. There was, on the other hand, some surprise – at least in his own tankpool24 Mercedes team – at the drive-through penalty for Norbert Kiss for having crossed the white line during the start sprint in Race 1. Kiss quoted that there was little else he could have done to keep from slamming at full tilt into the rear of Albacete’s MAN, the Spaniard having hasn’t accelerated as rapidly – see above: Racing Rule #1 He who brakes, loses!
Running in P6 behind Albacete when he was called in around mid-race, Kiss saw all hopes of finishing in the points evaporate. His P15 finish also meant he’d have to start Race 2 from that position. A point(s)less exercise all in all for the Hungarian twice-champ.
Impressions:
