Truck Grand Prix – This and That

24. July 2012This Friday morning at the Truck Grand Prix, we met Ralf Fuß, the race director, on his way to work. It was slightly drizzling, but heavy rain had been forecasted.
Concerning these bleak forecasts he said: “It takes us one year to plan such a big event and now we are experiencing this bad weather. Hopefully, there will still be plenty of spectators.” Despite the weather many spectators were flocking to the event. Overall 180,000 people showed up. If the weather conditions had been better the mark of 200,000 would have been broken. This constant rain was especially aggravating to the truckracers, who had signed up for the truck-parade on Sunday. Like every year, they had positioned themselves in rank and file on the lawn down at the Müllenbachschleife. When it was about to start, some of the trucks sank into the mud and had to be released first. The Korso, which is the event for many truckracers, had to be cancelled. The truckracing fans – especially the German ones – were apparently more than satisfied with their truck racing idols. Jochen Hahn regained the lead of the Championship ranking and at the same time was nominated the most popular truckracer at the Ring again.
After a particularly rough start at the beginning of the event, Markus Oestreich, stood at the top of the podium after the last race. Gerd Köber probably surprised the managers of Iveco, who were at the Ring to visit, because he did not only win points in every race as a race-by-race pilot, but “Mr. Truckracing” got to stand on the podium twice.
The female version of Köber, Ellen Lohr, the Grand Dame of Truckracing, won the first 5 points for her team, with her tankpool24-Mercedes, which is technically on the level of 2006 when it was last used during the European Championship. The second German female driver, Steffi Halm, who is driving the MAN of the Lion Team for the races of the European Truck Racing Championship every once in a while and who is otherwise racing in the French Championship, placed top ten multiple times, just like her teammate Ludovic Faure. This caused a mess for the people calculating the points, because according to section 4.1 of the FIA regulations, the Lion Truck – drivers could not gain any more points.
In the FIA races, René Reinert, had been extremely unlucky, but swept the board during the Mittelrhein-Cup. He was also one of the few double starters. A victory on Saturday and stepping up on the podium on Sunday: This is something the MAN driver would have never believed to happen.
The Lenz Family also painted the town red during the Mittelrhein-Cup. Heinz-Werner did not make it onto the podium, but his son Sascha returned the favor for the loss against his father during the Friday-Go-and-Stop.
The Truck Grand Prix is not only about truckracing, it is a huge event with live concerts and an exhibition of the commercial vehicle industry. The protagonists in the truckracing business, MAN and Renault, had invited thousands of customers and business partners, who did not only enjoy the exciting races, but were also shown the newest innovations and products. Even if it was not the same amount of people, but there were also many customers and friends in the tent of Meritor. They always have a reason to be happy, because most race trucks are equipped with rear axles and brakes from Meritor. DKV is one of the oldest main sponsors of the Truck Grand Prix and just like every year, their tent was packed with people. The Dakar-Truck by Iveco was constantly surrounded by spectators and Mercedes-Benz really made a big show: The entire helicopter area, which was several thousand square meters large, belonged to Mercedes. Last year they exhibited the Actros on large-scale and this year it was the Antos. Many truckracing fans were a little bit confused over this much commitment regarding the Truck Grand Prix, because everyone knows that the Stuttgart-based company is currently skeptical about truckracing. The only Mercedes-Team in the FIA ETRC, the MB-Motorsport with Ellen Lohr’s tankpool24-Mercedes, has to do without any support from the plant, unlike many MAN and Renault teams. In the Truck-EC, Mercedes is a sheer private initiative of individual Mercedes enthusiasts, who are die-hard truckracing fans.
The video live stream, that showed almost all races of the race trucks on the Internet for the whole world to see, was again extremely successful. 65,114 visitors watched the live stream on the different websites of the sponsors. During the four-week long break between the next race in Smolensk and the 8th race in Most the live stream and also the highly discussed future of the Truck Grand Prix will be on the agenda again.

Impressions: