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Valencia This And That

Valencia This And That

04. May 2015There was a bit uncertainty for the teams in the run-up to the season-opening round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Valencia - and not for the teams alone but evidently also for the organiser. The exit of MAN, following on that of Renault a year earlier, was a watershed no doubt, and the truck racing community now has to find its feet again. So things weren’t like they have been in earlier pre-seasons.
For one thing, we haven’t seen such a poverty of testing laps in a long time. It’s been ages, too, since trucks were completed so close to the start of the season. And so the taxi rides for the press were the more welcome for the one-hour practice sessions they entailed under the FIA regulations. For some of the teams this represented the only opportunity to test their trucks in conditions approximating those in a race.
Now that the second race on each day, which the eight top finishers in the first race start in reversed order, is good for as many points, i.e. 20 for the winner instead of 10 hitherto, and there’s a full 5-points difference between winner and second place instead of one point as the case has been all along, many critics were predicting that sparks would fly.
As it turned out, everyone was on his or her best behaviour at Valencia; but things will certainly look different on the other circuits that have sections in which we’ve seen positions more fiercely contested and defended. Be that as it may, Races 2 and 4 were extremely exciting to watch, and in the final race on Sunday the top five crossed the finish not quite two seconds apart. These five, frontrunners all last season, set the pace throughout the opening weekend, led – as you might expect – by the irrepressible defending champ Norbert Kiss (HUN).
His keenest competitor last season, German MAN colleague Jochen Hahn, was hobbled on the first day when his water tanks sprang a leak — those massive containers whose contents are vital for brake performance. At the time the thrice champion was running second behind compatriot René Reinert (MAN) but ahead of Kiss. Hahn was good for victory, which would have meant 16 points more than he did collect, in which event Kiss would take five fewer than him. The standings would have looked very different. But as the bantam from Altensteig commented wryly on Saturday evening, “Everyone gets hit once in a season — I hope my quota of misfortune is already complete.”
Reinert’s podium finish in the said race, indeed on the first weekend of the season, wasn’t entirely surprising. What dismayed the partisan crowd, though, was the fact that, in the early laps, local hero Antonio Albacete just couldn’t keep up with the leaders, including the two Czech Buggyra pilots David Vršecký and Adam Lacko. But the Madrilène came good on Sunday; in the day’s second race he scaled the top step of the podium to the delight of his numerous fans in the crowd of 21,000.
A nervy participant on the track was Scania pilot Erwin Kleinnagelvoort. The Dutchman, who has been around for decades, started a race on pole for the first time in his long career, but just wasn’t able to get it together at the rolling start. Kleinnagelvoort himself wouldn’t have expected to finish on the podium, but he did leave Spain with 10 championship points — a bounty he couldn’t have reckoned with beforehand.

Impressions:

Valencia This And That
Valencia This And That