FIA ETRC presentation in Paris
17. March 2016The new promoter of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, ETRA Promotion GmbH, has formally revealed its plans for the coming season at a presentation in the library of the French automobile club in Paris attended by FIA president Jean Todt.
The most salient of the plans the two managing partners of ETRA, Georg Fuchs and Rolf Werner, elaborated on was the extension of television reportage, for which there is interest from at least 70 countries and every continent. As in previous years, a 26 minute capsule will be provided to broadcasters immediately after each race weekend. There will also be more live reporting this year - till now this was only done in individual cases, as on last year’s season-ender in Le Mans that aired on French TV.
The 2016 Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring will be covered live and exhaustively on Motors TV. In parallel, live-streamed video, as of the Truck Grand Prix that truckracing.de / truckrace.info has delivered online for seven years in association with ADAC Mittelrhein and the Truck Race Organisation TRO, will this year also be available for the races on the Hungaroring.
The idea of the TRO Challenge, in which racers who don’t finish on the podium also earn points, is being revivified with the National Challengers Cup. The objective here is to attract race-by-race participants who, more often than not, have no real prospects of winning.
The guests at the presentation of the ETRA concept included active racers, among them Ellen Lohr, Thomas Robineau, Anthony Janiec, David Vršecký, and Frankie Vojtíšek, representatives of various teams and sponsors, the organisers of all the events on the 2016 calendar, and a few mediafolk as well.
Ellen Lohr, speaking on behalf of the racers, couldn’t resist a small barb aimed at the powers that be. The grande dame of truck racing, having been involved with the sport for 20 years now, pointedly asked Jean Todt if he remembered in 2014 when the German Formula 1 race at the Hockenheimring took place on the same weekend as the Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring. She then asked the FIA president if he also remembered which of the two events hosted the larger number of spectators. Lohr was drawing attention to the fact that the ETRC, the most successful FIA-administered motor racing series in Europe after Formula 1, is still little more than a wallflower in the consciousness of many of the continent’s motorsports decisionmakers.
Be that as it may, it’s the growing crowds of exuberant fans that drive home the truth that a truck race, being a “live at the track” event above anything else, is an experience you simply cannot forget.
Impressions:
