Closing Date

09. April 2009In their publication dated Dec. 22, 2008, the FIA determined the time period January 12 to April 16 for the teams and pilots to register for the European Truck Racing Championship 2009. This was an extraordinary long time frame; usually the deadline is one month before the first race which, as is well known, will take place on May 9 in Assen.
Now it was officially announced that the deadline was rescheduled to April 10, and potential pilots and teams were informed accordingly. However, on April 10 is Good Friday which is a religious holiday in large parts of Europe – and also in Geneva, the location of the FIA.
Principally this period was long enough, and there will hardly be a person really interested in participating in the championship who did not register long ago. Hence we will hardly need to worry about discrepancies arising from a misapprehended deadline.
How many drivers enlisted in the end, we will probably learn some time after the Easter holidays at the earliest. The maximum number of entries is 26; this limitation was established by the FIA in 2006, as in the year before there was a total of 55 registrations; a number some circuits could hardly cope with.
Nowadays all the circuits for the European Championship have a capacity for up to 26 trucks, so that a starting place on the grid is always guaranteed for the FIA pilots. But whether there will be so many people in order to shoot a photograph like the one shown above – Albacete in 2006 – that remains to be seen. On the other hand, as the SuperRaceTruck Championship in 2004 proved – when there were no more than 8 pilots registered – a season with just 5 equal trucks and pilots can be extremely thrilling.