Friday in Albacete
03. June 2011Albacete - Let’ start with the best news: it has not rained yet in Albacete – except for a few droplets. And chances are that it will stay dry this weekend – with temperatures of around 20 degrees, which is quite different from what the weather services predicted a few days ago. But all those who had travelled to Spain via France met with steady rain and extremely strong winds – and, while listening to the radio news, were informed about the fabulous summer conditions in their respective hometowns.
Rarely before in a round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship has a paddock been as crowded as the one in Albacete this year, as in addition to truck racing, with 31 RaceTrucks registered, the event also features a round of the Copa de Espana de Resistenca with around 60 touring cars – in two leagues. In Albacete the Friday is usually rather uneventful, but this year there were even several different meetings in the TRO tent on the agenda – and the most important one on the subject of the round in Smolensk.
A delegation from Russia, headed by former truck racer Mike Konovalov, had come to Spain in order to talk with those teams intending to participate in the Smolensk round about the tedious journey as well as the complicated and time-consuming customs formalities. TRO coordinator Fabien Calvet has got confirmations of participation for 15 trucks and the representatives of those teams were once more made quite plainly aware of the fact that the journey to Russia requires a lot more preparations than any trip to one of the other 9 venues in the ETRC.
Concerning the spectacular Misano incidents the dust seems to have settled a bit. Of course, almost everyone expects local hero Antonio Albacete to have his “big appearance” in Albacete. Last year the Madrilenian managed to collect 59 out of 60 possible points. And he certainly would have liked to be the first truck racer who succeeded in scoring the total amount of 60 points by winning all four races. However, his German MAN colleague Jochen Hahn beat him to it in the round in Italy. And the MAN RaceTrucks were absolutely on a roll in Misano which naturally bugs Mario Kress and his MKR Technology Team who were riding on a wave of success last year. On the other hand we only finished two rounds out of ten, and a lot can happen in the remaining ones. Anyhow, Kress is quite sure that his multinational group of pilots – the Swiss Markus Bösiger, the German Markus Oestreich and the Czech Adam Lacko – will again be able to prevail against the MAN drivers as well as the two Buggyra Freightliner pilots David Vsrecky (CZE) and Chris Levett (GBR).
And, just in case that it wouldn’t run smoothly with truck racing anymore, the most successful RaceTruck constructor demonstrated in Albacete that he could easily make a living from performing stunts on his quad, too.
Impressions:
