Truck Racing Start in Europe

27. March 2009While in Brazil the pilots revved the engines of their race trucks already at the beginning of this month, the start of the European season will be tomorrow in Brands Hatch with the first round of the British Championship, where the focus will certainly fall on Chris Levett. The young Englishman is going to drive the truck with which Jean-Philippe Belloc gained 239 points and moved up to 5th place in the overall ranking in the championship last year. The Frenchman, too, got sucked into the maelstrom of the financial and economic crises. Despite the tremendous popularity he enjoys in France, the former FIA GT champion did not succeed in getting the necessary sponsorships in the end. For two years Belloc was in the team of Lutz Bernau and, together with Jochen Hahn, became runner-up in the team championship the previous year.
Last year the Bird Team of the Levett Family was not quite happy with their new truck; although several times Chris Levett was also dogged by bad luck – as in Zolder were he had a nasty accident through no fault of his own. But all in all, the team had certainly set their hopes a bit higher. After all, in 2007 Levett secured 8th overall, and in the internal British fight with Stuart Oliver he came out the clear winner. Last year he gained only 98 points and was on 9th position in the overall ranking. And it certainly bugged the team even more that Oliver was 19 points ahead and secured 7th overall. And also in the British Championship the man from the north of England was more successful in the end.
For a long time the Levett family discussed whether, after only one year, they should again construct another completely new truck. While they still were considering the matter, there was suddenly an announcement that Lutz Bernau’s second truck – with the first one Antonio Albacete will participate for Cespa – would be free. Soon the Brit and the two times European Champion reached an agreement. Some days ago Chris Levett went to the Ammersee to pick up the race truck, yesterday the beauty already shone in Birds blue, and tomorrow Levett is going to do the first serious tests during the warm-up in Brands Hatch.
But all-time rival Oliver seems to be well prepared, too. Only recently the 2004 European Champion – together with some English colleagues as well as European Championship pilots Mikhail Konovalov and Mikael Johansson – spent some days in China as guests of the China Truck Racing Association in order to get their hosts a bit more acquainted with European truck racing.
Levett, Oliver, and any other English pilot, who will possibly participate also in the European Championship, will once again be in for an enormously strenuous year, because for them there are 7 additional races on the agenda. And it will become extremely exhausting on the Nürburgring, when they again have to compete in two different events. As soon as the pilots leave the Parc Fermé after the European Championship races, they have to line up on the grid for the Mittelrhein Cup, because this race is always part of the British Championship.