Thursday, 28.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
Friday in Jarama

Friday in Jarama

04. October 2013Jarama - Spain, we Europeans all know, is synonymous for sun. But as the teams made their way to the Circuito del Jarama a few kilometres north of Madrid for the 9th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, they had the creepy feeling that the end of the world had come upon them. Pitch-dark skies, lit up grotesquely by brilliant flashes of lightning, and frequent cloudbursts accompanied the trucks on their journey through the Spanish Pyrenees, across mountain passes as high as 1,444 metres above sea level. The three MAN teams of Jochen Hahn, René Reinert, and Mika Mäkinen, who were travelling together, suffered the brunt of the bad weather. Just when they broke journey at a truckstop shortly before Burgos they were blanketed by a severe hailstorm with chunks of ice the size of tennis balls. Windscreens were smashed, antennae and outer mirrors struck off, and some of the vehicles looked like cratered moonscapes. The truck racers too didn’t come away unscathed, but they managed to pick themselves up and get going. The shattered sunroofs of some of the motorhome semitrailers were patched up and new mirrors were ordered from Germany so that, at the very least, they would be roadworthy for the 14-day-long tour to Jarama and Le Mans. Since this afternoon, though, the sky over the Circuito del Jarama has for the most part been a brilliant blue, and it’s forecast to stay that way through the entire weekend.
The last week was rather severe too for the mechanics of the Hungarian OXXO team, whose junior pilot Benedek Major was an unfortunate victim of the spectacular crash in Zolder. His MAN was a total wreck, and if the truck was to race in the two remaining events of the season there was no option but to work round the clock to restore it. And the Hungarians have succeeded — the Number 12 MAN now looks like new.
Meanwhile, the truck race circus now has a complete newcomer in André Kursim, who’s taken over the cockpit of the tankpool24 Mercedes vacated by his compatriot Ellen Lohr at short notice. (Lohr’s surprising switch to the Czech Buggyra team is one of the most widely discussed topics here in Jarama.) The 22-year-old Hessian’s debut race on the old-fashioned and rather difficult Jarama circuit isn’t going to be easy for him, and his mentor Markus Oestreich is doing all he can to get him up to speed, familiarising him with the peculiarities of the track.
Yesterday afternoon the FIA finally published its official entry list, which acknowledges Lohr’s switch to Buggyra and Kursim as her replacement at tankpool24. But instead of 31 entries on the unofficial first list, there are “only” 29 now. But even that number is more than an abundance — many circuits admit no more than 26 race trucks at a time.

Impressions:

Friday in Jarama
Friday in Jarama