Zolder – This and That

25. May 2007Despite the predominantly sunny weather the atmosphere in Zolder was a bit gloomy. It was somewhat disappointing that not more than 12,000 people came to the event. Normally there were about 30 to 40 thousand coming to the races. Especially the Sunday was unusually quiet, and the relatively well-frequented race on Sunday could not make up for that. The Zolder race of the European Truck Racing Championship, which used to be in September in former years, had been shifted to May this year. Moreover, Thursday, May 17th, was a holiday in Belgium, too. And so it was assumed that a lot of fans preferred to enjoy a long weekend instead. Next year, that’s everyone’s conviction, there will be more fans again.
But that was not the only matter that irritated the teams and sponsors. The paddock with its oblong shape and the narrowing near the pit lane is rather unfavourably situated. For years, there was also the parc fermé located there, and the trucks were lined-up there before they entered the circuit. This was changed, and now the teams of the series for the support races are placed there. For the trucks there was a lot of space now in the back of the paddock. In spite of that, there was a lot of testiness, especially on Thursday, but on Friday, too. Allegedly, some teams had positioned themselves where they didn’t belong; the positioning plans had to be altered several times, and those belonging together were not always placed together. Nevertheless, there was a lot of space left in the back of the paddock which was intended for the trucks, and the Renault team of Frankie Vojtisek with their huge marquee would have had ample room to stay. But now Vojtisek and Simeon Martin on their heavy trucks had to cut their way through the crowd from their position right at the entrance of the narrow paddock several hundred metres away, to get to the line-up for the start. And after the race they had to make the same arduous trip back from the parc fermé. On Saturday it was not that problematic, and on Sunday, before the start, the stewards showed consideration at last and conducted Vojtisek’s RaceTruck through the pit lane past the crowd in the paddock. Martin could not start because of a problem with the clutch.
The free space was meanwhile occupied by motor homes of the other series, although permits to enter were handled rather restrictively. This experience could also be gained by the drivers of the service trucks who wanted to deliver urgently needed spare parts. They needed a lot of persuasiveness to convince the sentry to open the barrier at the entrance, but now and then, some second sentry positioned some hundred metres ahead took relish in his power to let a transport vehicle wait for an hour, while the mechanics in the paddock were impatiently awaiting the delivery of the parts.
But in spite of all that, the races were the main topic. Sunday night there were the first bets in the press centre whether Bösiger would win the championship. But everybody involved in truck racing knows that there are a lot of imponderables deciding about success or failure, and especially Buggyra race engineer Mario Kress always points out that the Freightliners were always rather successful in Barcelona and Zolder, but that there are circuits where the RaceTrucks from Roudnice came not so well off in the past. And that’s a consolation for the opponents. In Zolder it was Mercedes pilot Jochen Hahn who was the most successful one in keeping up with the Buggyras. Of the huge MAN Armada, Antonio Albacete and Gerd Körber seem to have the best chances; both drive one of the new Common Rail trucks. Egon Allgäuer, with his modified “previous-year” truck, is still mixing it up at the top, although on the second day of the races in Zolder he had to drive with his middle finger in a splint – after his crash with Stuart Oliver on Saturday.
In Zolder, Vojtisek was finally on a position where he had been expected to be in Barcelona already. According to the technicians, they had “found” some more horse power while thoroughly checking the Renault RaceTruck during the seven weeks’ break, and instantly the
Czech qualified for the second row on the grid.
As in the year before with Chris Levett in Jarama – it again happened that a guest driver – this time Jose Rodrigues – won points in the European Championship. Rodrigues declared that he plans to start at all the rounds as a race-by-race pilot, safe for Nogaro – that’s the date when his son will be celebrating his Holy Communion. This means, that the man from Portugal could certainly now and again “snatch away” some points from a title contender; but in principle points should only be given to pilots registered for the FIA championship, as it was always customary and as it is handled in the statistics of this website at the automatically differentiated calculation of the points since 2004. Moreover, quite possibly, there won’t be an official FIA ranking list directly at the circuit any longer. The FIA decided to terminate the co-operation with the FIA coordinator who for years was responsible for the ranking. So it’s not really surprising that, especially in regard to the team ranking, a lot of different results were published, because everybody did his own calculation. The current information about the drivers’ overall standing can be found on “truckracing.de / truckrace.info”.
As is well known, the FIA decided in Barcelona at short notice, not to add the points for the team ranking analogously to the points gained in the drivers’ ranking, but to have a separate ranking list for the 8 pilots listed for the team ranking. Beginning with the races in Albacete there will be here an automatically calculated list for the teams, too, on this basis. The current ranking is as follows: on first position is the Team Buggyra with 198 points, on second is the Team Allgäuer (133), followed by Team Hahn (94) and Team Frankie Vojtisek (82).
But there is yet another debut, which is a bid hidden: Since the races in Zolder – after a lengthy test phase – there is a PDA version of this website officially accessible now. Under www.truckrace.mobi basic information of this website is available in German and English.