Changes
15. October 2009In all kind of sports there is a certain turnover of people after the end of the season, and this applies to the FIA European Truck Racing Championship as well, although in this series there is relatively little activity in that regard. Quite a lot of things are decided upon during the winter break, and more often than not are unveiled shortly before the trucks take to the track again. But this time some information and decisions became known in advance. Fabien Calvet, officially the FIA’s person responsible for all technical matters in regard to the RaceTrucks – but de facto the first contact person for almost all truck racing issues – implied several times during the season that next year he will quit his job after four years in service.
In the case of Markus Bösiger, the 2007 European Champion and runner-up in 2008, there was quite some speculation that possibly he would withdraw from truck racing at the end of the season, because everybody knew that the Swiss entrepreneur is very busy with some new projects at home. And what’s more, Bösiger was far from pleased about the 2009 season’s run of events. Time and again problems with the tyres and the set-up ruined his chances of winning a race, but what really annoyed him were several decisions of the race officials to his disadvantage. At the beginning of the week Bösiger released a detailed, quite revealing article on “truckrace.ch”, where he gives a description of the events of the past season and particularly dwells on the incidents in Jarama. And the Swiss emphasizes also that, actually, the taking over of Egon Allgäuer’s team including the properties in Austria was practically a done deal. But especially in view of the occurrences in Jarama he does not really believe that he would stand a chance as team owner and pilot in the current situation. But he indicated that perhaps he would again take part as a pilot next year. So there is no sign that the Swiss driver does consider retirement.
In the case of Allgäuer – who often questioned some the FIA’s decisions, too – the situation seems to be quite different. Furthermore, the Austrian makes no bones about the fact that he would like to leave European truck racing. It’s common knowledge that he has a predilection for the Brazilian truck racing, where he has already participated several times as a guest driver. With hindsight the many conversations the two truck racers had lately can be viewed under quite a different aspect.
For Allgäuer and his team a takeover by Bösiger would certainly have been an ideal solution. Now he has to look for another potential buyer. At the moment there aren’t any official announcements about the Austrian’s plans for the future.
And there isn’t any official information either about what Calvet is going to do. The fact that the Frenchman is no longer Chief Technician for the RaceTrucks, does not necessarily mean that he will withdraw completely from the truck racing business. Calvet is of the opinion – as virtually everyone in truck racing – that something must be done to improve the promotion and the public image of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. Basically this championship consists of nine to ten independent events, and at the end the points are tallied up. There is no uniform organization to represent the series externally, as is customary in most of the other motorsports series. Calvet, who is a former successful truck racer himself, a journalist and promoter, and in the last few years also the Technical Delegate of the FIA, is believed to be exactly the right person for this task.
Last week he officially presented his plans to the FIA, and obviously they were regarded with favour; now it’s time to get the right partners and sponsors on board. But that will probably be the most difficult problem.
