Preliminary Report Albacete

29. May 2007In Albacete (Spain) there will be the third round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship this weekend. 30 pilots are registered – 10 for race-by-race. There will be a driver there nobody thought would be seen at the races this season: Markus Oestreich. Oese is not registered as a race-by-race pilot, but will drive for Lutz Bernau on the MAN of Jean-Philippe Belloc. By tradition, the Frenchman will start at the 24 hours of Le Mans, and while there are the races in Albacete this weekend, at the same time the pre-qualifications for the Le Mans race will take place.
Albacete lies around 700 metres (2,300 ft.) above sea-level on the tableland of La Mancha. Especially the surrounding of the circuit which is situated a bit out-of town, is somewhat desert-like. And the pilots associate the Albacete circuit primarily with heat, sand and dust. Two years ago, on the Friday before the race, a day that’s usually not very busy, the “water battle of Albacete” took place in the paddock. For the coming weekend, again, no rainfall was forecast, however, it’s not likely that the temperatures will rise above 40 degrees C (104 degrees F) as in 2005. This year they will probably be a bit below 30 °C (86 °F) which is rather temperate for this area. And a breeze of 2 bft. will make these temperatures even more tolerable, but on the other hand, this means that the sand will constantly be blown on the circuit.
What Solingen means to the Germans, that’s Albacete to the people in Spain – it’s their “town of knifes”. And so the winners of the Spanish championship get a framed knife instead of a cup. And on this circuit, knives are always drawn too, metaphorically speaking. We all remember last year’s battle fought between local hero Antonio Albacete and Adam Lacko.
The circuit is rather narrow at many crucial points, and the trucks often skid off the asphalt. Then grime and dust affect the visibility considerably. But let’s hope that this will not affect the visibility of the marshals. At least their Belgian colleagues in Zolder seemed to have had problems in this regard. Or they just took delight in waving the blue flag. Again and again the blue flag was shown nonsensically. But the inglorious culmination was when they signalled to the leading Markus Bösiger that a faster truck wanted to lap. Of course, the Swiss stood his ground, and he is the top favourite in Albacete, too.
After the PDA version of “truckracing.de / truckrace.info” now the RSS-feed is also online. To the videos were added some shots taken from Frankie Vojtisek’s inboard camera. By and by we will add other shots, too.