Friday in Albacete

04. June 2010Albacete - There was blazing hot sunshine all day long; until late afternoon there was not a single cloud to be seen in the fabulously blue sky. At temperatures far above 30 °C in the shade – and more than 45 °C in the sun – everybody in the paddock was craving for some refreshments. This was quite different from yesterday evening, when for a short time, those people who were taking part 2 years ago were reminded of the thunderstorm on Sunday back then, when the circuit was flooded and the race had to be stopped, and afterwards the teams could not leave the paddock because the access tunnel was submerged in water. But yesterday it wasn’t that bad. Some squalls, short heavy rain showers, some occasional lightning and some short-time power-failure, and that was about it. The visual effect, however, was rather impressive. The huge Castrol gateway set up by Team Allgäuer collapsed due to the interruption of the air flow.
As already indicated in our preliminary report, Buggyra intends to appoint a German pilot, Uwe Nittel, for their second Freightliner here in Albacete. Already yesterday there was a section of the FIA entry list on Twitter under “truckracing.de”. But now a rumour is going about that a registration of a second Buggyra truck has not been approved by every team. There was no official statement given, so that actually the official entry list applies here, with Nittel having the race number 36.
The current championship leader, Markus Bösiger, has decided to postpone his necessary hand surgery – an intramedullary nail has to be removed – until after the Nogaro event. As there is a 4 weeks break between the round in Nogaro and the Truck GP at the Ring there will be more time for the wound to heal. He doesn’t want to take any risk.
Now everybody is eager to see whether in Albacete the „3-M-Team“ (Markus, Markus, Mario) will be able to live up to their surprising Misano ‘success story’
At least it seems that the old stager, Mario Kress, still has got a lot of savvy, because today the team checked several times the chassis clearance of their Renault trucks under the watchful eyes of FIA technical delegate Ross Garrett. But the other teams, too, have not idled their time away during the – albeit short – break after the opening of the season. All the more are we looking forward to watching an exciting timed practice tomorrow.