Most – Preliminary Report
26. August 2009After a five-week break the truck racers are going to meet in Most / Czech Republic this coming weekend for the 7th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship – metaphorically speaking the last corner before the finishing straight. By and by David Vrsecky sort of ‘crept up’ on front-runner Antonio Albacete and is by now only 14 points behind the Spaniard. The Czech Buggyra pilot knows the circuit in Most like the back of his hand, and he will certainly try to put his home advantage to good use. His team mate Markus Bösiger could support the Czech in his efforts, although understandably the Swiss driver will first of all seek his own best interests. The 2007 champion, who is trailing by 62 points, will certainly not have given up his ambitions of winning the title; after all, ideally up to 240 points can still be gained by everybody. And moreover, Bösiger has the German Jochen Hahn on his tail – who is only 17 points behind.
And evidently Hahn has overcome his technical problems since the Nogaro event and is now an avid points scorer.
In doing so Hahn has no reason to be considerate of his Spanish MAN colleague Albacete. Quite the contrary, there will rather be a fight for the unofficial title ‘Best MAN pilot’, and in the previous races Hahn mostly did quite well. Now that at the Munich manufacturer of commercial vehicles the die is cast in favour of truck racing, and there was an official statement that also in 2010 and 2011 they will be actively engaged in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, the MAN pilots will certainly battle more carefree – but by no means more defensively – for the dominating position not only within the brand.
A total of 21 trucks are registered. The FIA pilots Eduardo and José Rodrigues from Portugal and Mikael Johansson from Sweden will not take part. They are also among the drivers who live the furthest from Most.
Again there will be three race-by-race pilots – Jennifer Janiec, presently the only lady among the truck racers, and the Netherlanders Cees Zandbergen and Erwin Kleinnagelvoort, who had that spectacular accident in the final race at the Ring.
The entry list, dated August 14, still bears the addition “subject to the results of the doping tests carried out on July 5th in Barcelona”. Several pilots have already commented on these tests on their own website or on other sites. In the FIA European Truck Racing Championship Barcelona is the only circuit where those tests are carried out, and they have already been done there previously. But one single check once a year does hardly allow any conclusions to be drawn and seems to be just window dressing. And when, after 7 weeks, there are still no results available, it reinforces this impression, especially as almost everyone doubts the meaningfulness of such tests in a motorsports series such as truck racing.
On the other hand we still remember that in a country, which doesn’t host any events of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship anymore, on Sunday morning the first thing they did was breathalyse the pilots – albeit only the drivers of the national Truck Racing Championship.
This is certainly not going to happen in Most; the more so as, according to the weather services, there will be temperatures of more than 30 °C (86 °F) on Thursday and Friday, so that water and juice will be preferred as thirst quenchers. For Saturday the weather services predict an overcast sky and a sharp drop in temperatures – not exceeding 20 °C (68 °F). The same goes for Sunday. For both days they forecast rain showers late in the afternoon (with a probability of 30 %), which is exactly the time when the final race will take place on both days.
However, in regard to weather forecasts the truck racers could tell many stories; for instance the start of the season last year in Barcelona.
For more than half a year there had not been a single drop of rain and then, right at the beginning of the race weekend, it started raining and the rain lasted for three days – contrary to what the weather services had been telling.
The round in Most is one of the 3-day events of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. On Friday they start already at 2:20 p.m. with the first free practice and then end the day officially at 6:40 p.m. after the drivers’ briefing. And particularly the German speaking participants will probably push for the meeting to finish early, as at 6:30 p.m. the 30 minute report “Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring” will be aired on n-tv.
