FIA Regulations 2011 - Tyre Lottery and Prize Money

18. January 2011Since January 17 the regulations of the FIA for the truck racing season 2011 are complete – and can also be looked up on our WebPortal „truckracing.de / truckrace.info“ by clicking on „TruckRacing“ – “FIA-Veröffentlichungen für Fahrer, Teams und Medien“ (FIA publications for drivers, teams and media). The closing date for the teams and drivers is March 30 – three and a half weeks before the start of the season in Donington. While last year the sporting regulations – without the appendixes – covered 15 pages with 15 sections, this year they contain no less than 22 sections and a total of 18 pages. And the bigger part of the extended regulations is about the tyres.
In 2010 this subject fit in 6 lines, but this year it requires one and three quarters of a page – with one page containing more than 60 lines. The “tyre lottery” is described meticulously – see also our report “New Date, New Tyre Regulations” dated November 16, 2010, where the “tyre lottery” was already described shortly. For more details please click on “TruckRacing” – “FIA-Veröffentlichungen für Fahrer, Teams und Medien“ / „2011 ETRC Sporting Regulations“ – Section 9.
And there is yet another noteworthy novelty; at the end of the season the pilots ranking first to tenth place will get prize money amounting to 2,000 – 200 Euros and the six best teams will get 4,000 – 1,000 Euros.
This could perhaps encourage the one or other pilot to form a team with one of his colleagues. So far the additional entry fee of 4,000 Euros was certainly a reason for many pilots to refrain from entering the team championship. They only had a chance to get on the podium if some of the big teams failed to finish a race, and at the end of the season they probably had to realize: “high costs but no financial rewards”. But now they will have a good chance to get a large part of their money back.
The FIA people in charge seem keen to give more substance to the team championship. The total prize money for the 10 top pilots of the championship is 9,300 Euros, whereas the total amount for only six teams (up to now there were never more than four team entries each season) is 16,000 Euros.
True, the sporting regulations are now even more extensive, however we will have to wait and see. Once a word such as “preferably” appears in the text, the absolute regulations start to disintegrate. And how much even rather precise regulations can be open to interpretation, became apparent at the round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Smolensk, and even more so at the Formula One event in Yeongam / South Korea a few weeks later.
And when this event, of all races, was awarded with the title “best motorsports event of the year”, this decision met with incomprehension; and the fact that a few days ago the Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO) fired Chung Young-Cho – head organizer of the Korean GP – and two other executive officers, is an impressive demonstration of how different perceptions and opinions can be.