FIA Prizegiving Ceremony 2013

17. October 2013When it’s time for the traditional FIA ceremony on the Sunday evening of the final race weekend of the season, everybody is once again best of friends with everybody else. And after a weekend like the last one in Le Mans which went off very smoothly, without expensive crashes and no major arguments with the stewards, the mood is very much more convivial. Spaniard Antonio Albacete and his team principal Lutz Bernau couldn’t hide their disappointment over the title that could have been theirs – Albacete had led the standings till that morning, – but as the evening wore on even they too were caught up in the festivity.
The Truck Racing Organisation (TRO) and its president Fabien Calvet had laid on another extravaganza. More than 300 guests seated at the 43 large, round tables were treated to not only finger foods as hors d’œuvres but also an ample three-course menu thereafter.
The individual courses were punctuated by the prizegiving — and there were many to be given away. Each category was introduced with a small film. The prefatory promo film shot in Zolder, for which the truck racers had had to saunter, march, and jog along the pit straight for a good half-hour, was enthusiastically received. Appropriately edited and soundtracked, the clip evoked loud cheers and even amusement in places. The rest, mostly snatches of action on the track, were simply too crash-heavy for some, even though it’s this exactly that fascinates spectators the most. The video of the spectacular crash at Zolder on the truckracing.de / TRO Facebook page has now been viewed by almost half a million visitors; we registered more than 400,000 hits in the first week itself!
Seventeen-year-old rookie Benedek Major was the toast of the evening and took home the largest number of trophies — Rookie of the Year, second in the TRO Challenge (in which all pilots are automatically entered who were not in the top 10 the previous season), 10th in the drivers’ championship, and fourth in the team championship. The winner of the TRO challenge this year was German MAN pilot René Reinert, ahead of Major (MAN) and Belgian Jean-Pierre Blaise (Renault). The Renault driver has excellent prospects of winning this trophy next year because both Major and Reinert were top 10 finishers and will thus not be in the running in 2014.
The women’s trophies had been presented earlier, and to two racers from Germany — Steffi Halm (MAN) and Ellen Lohr, who started the season in a Mercedes-Benz and switched to a Buggyra Freightliner for the last two races. Lohr wasn’t able to make it back in time from her hotel, and so her prize was collected by the wife of Buggyra chief Martin Koloc instead.
Thereafter men dominated the stage — till it was time for the team prizes.
First fetched Jitka, the daughter of Frankie Vojtisek, together with team manager Radek Mencel the cup for her fathers the team, and when MKR Technology was awarded for its third place, team leader Karel Neffe was accompanied to the dais by Mario Kress’s spouse Klara. And then it was another procession of men — Konrad Hahn and Seppo Niinikoski for Castrol Team Hahn Racing, and Lutz Bernau for the new team champions.
And because the presenters too were all male (with the exception of the two young ladies who handed out the trophies), the honours for the top three in the standings, Jochen Hahn (GER), Antonio Albacete (ESP), and Markus Oestreich (GER) were a rather mechanical affair without the warmth and kisses otherwise usual at such occasions in France. Granted, truck racing is a masculine domain, but at FIA ceremonies past we’ve at least had a more balanced representation of the genders.
As soon as the official ceremony was over, there was a crowd on the stage — the obligatory group photographs were next on the agenda. It was way past midnight when the actual victory party kicked off in the enlarged Hahn tent. There was a live band, and all food and drinks were on the house — even though, Jochen Hahn pointed out with irony, he is Swabian. The feasting ended only early in the morning, after which some of the teams immediately hit the road homeward.

Impressions: