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Saturday in Barcelona

Saturday in Barcelona

31. March 2007Barcelona - Last night fell a lot of rain and, moreover, in the morning it was rather cold and quite a few people regretted not having brought some winter clothing. The sky stayed cloudy, but now and then there was some sunshine, however, not enough to dry the track before the beginning of the first free practice. So the first performance of the RaceTrucks this season became a rather turbulent event. Spinning trucks were the order of the day, some pilots took to the gravel, others even got stuck there. The situation became really precarious when, shortly before the finish, Antonio Albacete went full-speed towards the almost 180 degree La Caixa bend. Contrary to the F1, the 5 tons colossi still take the old course with the longer left turn and they don’t have to squeeze through the new hairpin chicane some hundred metres further on, either. Albacete’s MAN just sped straight ahead at the La Caixa and came to a screeching halt only 1 metre from the concrete wall.
But then – with the practice still going on – the marshals and stewards pulled the red MAN back on the track, while the other trucks sped by. The second free practice ran smoothly without any incidents and clearly substantiated the superiority of the Buggyra Freightliners. Right from the start, both Buggyra pilots achieved times the opponents couldn’t match up to, and in the end Bösinger was first with Vrsecky right behind. Third was Antonio Albacete (the first of the MAN pilots) followed by lone fighter Jochen Hahn on his Mercedes .
The Qualification race following the practice saw both Freightliner pilots on top and second position, respectively, and they remained there till the end of the race. Neither Bösiger, in 1st position, who could even pull away a bit from the chasing pack, nor Vrsecky, on 2nd, were ever really challenged, because both Albacete and Hahn were fully engaged in competing for 3rd position. Although it sometimes looked as if the Mercedes pilot was a wee bit faster – again and again he attacked the Spaniard – Albacete stood his ground right to the end of the race. Gerd Körber gained an unchallenged 5th position, followed by Jean-Philippe Belloc (both MAN). However, towards the end of the race the Frenchman had to fight off Egon Allgäuer, another MAN pilot. For several laps the Austrian and Frankie Vojtisek had fought the most exciting battle of the race, after the Czech had passed him at the start. Next came three MAN pilots: on 9th position was ex-champion Stuart Oliver, followed by Chris Levett on 10th, so that the Czech newcomer, Michel Dolak, had to content with the unpopular 11th position – only for positions 1 to 10 points can be gained.
The Cup race was a bit more dramatic. Already at the start there were several crashes, but that didn’t bother the truck racers much. However, there was some damage at several trucks, but mostly nothing serious, only marring the “beauty” a bit. Right at the start straight Belloc hit the back of Jochen Hahn’s Mercedes, but that didn’t impress the Swabian at all. After one more lap, however, coming out of the finish strait, he went straight across the gravel bed and, as a consequence, fell back from 4th on 12th position. He started a breathtaking pursuit race and progressed up the field to 6th position. Already on the first lap, the leading driver, Markus Bösiger, could put a distance of more than 1 second between himself and his chasers and was on his way to a sure start-finish victory, but his team mate, Vrsecky, had to yield to the aggressiveness of local hero Albacete. At first it looked as if the Czech could take the 2nd position away from the Spaniard, but towards the end he fell back dramatically and even had to worry that Gerd Körber would overtake him. The man from Rheinau had to fight off his team boss, Egon Allgäuer, all the time and on the final lap he saw a chance to get a podium. But in the end Vrsecky crossed the finish line with an advantage of merely 2 tenth of a second. Only one second later followed Allgäuer and Hahn. But the outcome was quite different. At Vrsecky’s truck the antenna of the GPS system for the speed limit had come loose. This brought about some irregularities in the speed measuring which inevitably caused a penalty of 10 seconds for overspeeding. This meant that Körber got a podium in the end, Allgäuer was promoted to take 5th position and consequently Vrsecky and Vojtisek were on 6th and 7th, respectively, followed by Stuart Oliver and Vojtisek’s Spanish team mate Simeon Martin. Already on his first racing day the Czech rookie Michal Dokal managed to gain a point.
Leading the overall ranking is Markus Bösiger who achieved the ultimate 30 points, next are Albacete (23), Körber (18) Vrsecky and Hahn (15 points each), and Allgäuer (14).
The team ranking was won by Buggyra, followed by Team Allgäuer and Team Hahn.