Most – This and That
01. September 2011The round in Most is an event where many fans spontaneously decide to attend and which also attracts lots of daily visitors, so that the cold and rainy weather on Saturday seemed not to be conducive to reach a record high, although on Sunday there were again sunny conditions. However, this morning chief marketing officer Ondrej Hertl proclaimed a historic attendance record: 90,000 visitors! This may also be contributed to the fact that many of the invited guests – particularly those of the namesake of the Truck GP in Most, Renault Trucks, who turned this round into a mega PR and marketing event. And of course the brilliant performance MKR Renault gave in Most came just in the right moment. But their victories in the two more profitable first races of the day with the treble triumph on Sunday were grist to the mills of the recently rather stricken MKR crew.
But in Most it became also apparent that Jochen Hahn is no longer unbeatable. Many a team boss was almost on the verge of desperation when, particularly in the SuperPole, the MAN pilot apparently effortlessly topped the fastest lap times of his opponents. Meanwhile Hahn’s point advantage over his rivals is so large that he could relax a bit. He does not necessarily have to win a race or to fight for a single point right to the end – it’s enough to get into the points.
And, of course, the man from Altensteig also benefits from the fact that his nearest rival, MAN pilot Antonio Albacete, is not really at his very best currently, and is also dogged by bad luck. All the same, the Spaniard remains the strongest opponent of his German brand colleague, provided nothing unforeseen happens.
But if Albacete’s streak of bad luck continued, even his runner-up position could be in jeopardy, because there is a chasing pack closing in on the Cepsa pilot, headed by the Czech Renault pilot Adam Lacko, closely followed by his fellow countryman David Vrsecky (Buggyra) and the two MKR Renault “Markuses” – Oestreich from Germany and Bösiger from Switzerland. Lacko is by now only 26 points behind the Spaniard and the Czech in turn holds a lead of only 28 points over Bösiger. Under ideal circumstances a pilot can collect 60 points in a race weekend – and there are 3 rounds yet to come.
Zoltan Birnbauer and the OXXO Team from Hungary were even more ill-fated than Albacete. Their black MAN truck hit the crash barriers twice – meaning night shifts for the OXXO mechanics.
Otherwise, teams and organisers were highly pleased with the event – they only lamented over the weather. At first the sizzling hot weather on Thursday and Friday, and then the extreme break in the weather on Saturday with heavy rain and the thermometer plummeting by more than 20 degrees.
The next meeting of the members of the FIA Truck Racing Commission had been scheduled for Tuesday evening.
In a meeting in Paris in the afternoon organizational matters had been discussed, particularly in regard to the coming season.
On this occasion the truck racing calendar 2012 was presented for the first time, but only as informal position paper subject to change.
Basically everything remains as usual. There are again 10 rounds scheduled – with almost all events taking place at their traditional weekends. The event in Donington, this year the venue for the opening round, is scheduled for the weekend June 30 / July 1 next season. This announcement caused a murmur of protest from some of the smaller teams, because the date for Nogaro has been postponed – from the third to the fourth weekend in June – so that there is a break of only a few days between the event in Southern France and the one in the Midlands. And there is an additional hardship for those teams who will participate also in the French Championship, because that means the rounds in Nogaro, Donington, Magny Cours and the TGP at the Ring will take place on four consecutive weekends.
But nothing has been definitely decided yet. As soon as the timetable has been cleared for publication, you will find the dates on this website.
Impressions:
