Nogaro Preliminary Report

12. June 2013It’s not quite four weeks since the 2013 season of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship kicked off at the Misano World Circuit in Italy, and we’re already almost into the third race weekend at the Circuit Paul Armagnac in Nogaro in the south of France.
For many teams and drivers it stood to reason that this race should take place directly the weekend after the previous one on the Circuito de Navarra. After all, they’d have to pass Nogaro on their way home from the north of Spain anyway, and could have avoided up to 3,000 kilometres of travel on stretches of France’s sinfully expensive expressways.
Those that could, dropped off their equipment (or at least part of it) at the the Circuit Paul Armagnac. For some years now the truck racers have had an arrangement with the owner of the circuit that allows them to do so. In fact, a number of teams would leave their trucks parked here following the spring race at Albacete — when that was still on the calendar.
Some lazed away the days between the races on a holiday on the Atlantic coast. Those from the Czech Republic were in absolutely no mood for a holiday — their villages, and some of their homes, were all under water after the recent floods.
But now the focus is back on Nogaro, a village of 3,000 that – every year – welcomes ten times as many spectators for the truck race. All the FIA pilots will congregate here again, even though not all will participate in the races of the European Championship — most notably Stephanie Halm, the shooting star at the last race in Navarra. The 2012 champion in the French series, Steffi is again in the lead after one round — and her French Lion Racing team from Lyon and its French sponsors no doubt want the young German racer to defend her title successfully. In any case, the races for the Coupe de France are scheduled immediately before or after the FIA races. As such, participating in both series is impossible, for that would involve eight races plus training and qualifying — far too much for both Steffi and her truck.
That leaves her compatriot Ellen Lohr as the only female participant in an ETRC field that includes 21 male racers. In addition to the complete FIA contingent, Spanish MAN pilot Javier Mariezcurrena has also registered for Nogaro. Ellen had to sit out Navarra while the tankpool24 team worked on the teething troubles with her Mercedes truck that surfaced at the first race in Misano. Team boss Markus Bauer hopes to have overcome these difficulties, but the small private team from Swabia has still not had any time to test the brand new Actros. (In fact, Ellen’s track outings at Misano represented the de facto shakedown.)
The taxi rides for the press on Friday and the free practice that follows will, therefore, be the first real test drives.
All who expected titleholder Jochen Hahn to be the runaway champion leader, like he was in the last two years, now stand corrected. Sure, with no DNFs, and no significant damage to his truck so far, the German leads this year’s championship by five points from the Czech David Vršecký (Buggyra Freightliner). His closest putative competitors – Antonio Albacete (ESP) and Markus Oestreich (GER), both from the MAN team of Lutz Bernau – share third spot 16 points behind. Both have had races that were ended by crashes, and had Albacete not dropped out following a collision with his Hungarian MAN colleague Norbert Kiss in the first Navarra race, he might even now have been level on points with Hahn, or indeed, even leading. From the beginning this year’s European Championship has been more fiercely contested than it was last year, when Hahn dominated the competition in the first half of the season.

Supported by Meritor Translation: Eliot Lobo

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