Friday in Nogaro
17. June 2011Nogaro - The round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Nogaro / Southern France is a real 3-day event, but in spite of that most of the teams did not turn up before Thursday. Those people who had arrived earlier got a foretaste of the extreme changes in the weather the truck racers have to reckon with this weekend. There was fog in the morning, blazing hot sunshine during the day and constant rain on Wednesday night which lasted until Thursday morning. And when team after team arrived in the paddock, things got a bit frantic at times.
And today – Friday – the temperatures again approached 30 °C, a cloudless sky, a mass of dark clouds – you name it! You never knew whether rain would lash down the next moment. And according to the weather services this unpredictable weather will go on all day long on Saturday. However, for Sunday they forecast (so far) that it is going to stay absolutely dry. But the weather people have so often messed up their forecasts in the last few days that the truck racers decided to take these inevitable things as they come.
But the first item on the pilots’ agenda was the press demonstrations. Almost all the teams took the opportunity to get some additional training sessions – particularly as those pilots who chauffeured the press representatives were allowed to have yet another 1-hour extra training in the afternoon.
And of course in this extra training, just as in the regular free practice sessions, the “usual suspects” clocked again the fastest lap times – although you never know who really let the cat out of the bag and who tries to keep a low profile. And according to that the first eleven drivers – the 5 MAN-A pilots Jochen Hahn (GER), Antonio Albacete (ESP), Uwe Nittel (GER), Alex Lvov (RUS), Stuart Oliver (GBR), the 4 Renault truck racers Markus Bösiger (SUI), Markus Oestreich (GER), Adam Lacko (CZE), Anthony Janiec (FRA) as well as the 2 Buggyra pilots David Vrsecky (CZE) and Chris Levett (GBR) were separated by more than 2 seconds.
And finally it came as no surprise that Hahn – who currently holds the lead in the overall ranking – again clocked fastest time. But hard on his heels there was a chasing pack of six pilots, separated mostly by a mere tenth of a second of each other,
There were amazing news concerning the only lady in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, Stephanie Halm with her tankpool24 Mercedes of MB-Motorsport. The young German pilot got some driving instructions from fellow German Uwe Nittel, and soon afterwards everybody could see that the former runner-up in the rally world championship had done a good job. Over the course of the day Halm was able to better her times by almost 8 seconds with her somewhat outdated Mercedes Benz and was by then on a level with the British pilot Mathew Summerfield, who is a lot more experienced in truck racing and whose MAN has even got a bit more engine power. Nittel, however, was less surprised about the result of his “lesson”. After all, in his “other life” the truck racer not only teaches safe driving at his race and rally driving school “drift & drive”, but currently takes part in races all over Europe – driving all kinds of racing vehicles – almost every weekend. And that’s why Nittel was virtually predestined to give Steffi Halm (who recently excelled mainly in the Porsche GT-Cup and the Mini Challenge) an understanding of the fundamental differences between the driveability of a RaceTruck with some 1000 HP and a total weight of 5.5 tons, and a touring car which is almost “delicate” in comparison.
And finally the FIA ETRC pilots lined up in front of the service truck of the TRO – TruckRacingOrganisation – to get their picture taken for the first time in a long while. In the true sense of the word: group portrait with lady.
Impressions: