Steffi Halm will race for Reinert again this season

31. March 2016Once again in 2016 Steffi Halm will race in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship - this time, indeed, as a full-season participant. Her participation directly doubles the proportion of women in European truck racing now that Ellen Lohr is going to continue driving for Truck Sport Bernau. Unfortunately, though, it’s going to be a long while yet till the German corporate target of 30 percent of women in positions of leadership is achieved in the FIA ETRC.
Mind you, there’s not one female racer in the ne plus ultra of motorsport, as the uninitiated imagine Formula 1 to be. From this perspective at least, the truck racers are way ahead of the times.
In fairness, we must confess that it was far from clear at the outset that Steffi would be back this season. The racy young Swabian came to the sport in 2011 as part of Markus Bauer’s new tankpool24 Mercedes team. She later drove for the French Lion team, for whom she picked up the Coupe de France Camions, becoming the first woman to do so. Last year she returned to a German truck racing team, the one owned by René Reinert, for what was originally intended to be only a cameo during the Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring. Reinert, owner of the large eponymous logistics firm, had just come up with his “Women Behind The Wheel” campaign to enthuse women about careers as truckers, and was looking for a suitable face. Steffi, of course, was the ideal choice, and she didn’t need much persuading.
The response she eventually generated, not least through her outstanding successes – three podiums and the first race win ever by a woman in the ETRC at the Hungaroring – made such an impact that they had to let her keep on truckin’ till the end of the season.
But her prospects in the new year didn’t look quite as promising.
Various teams had reached the ends of their sponsorship contracts. But the overall pie was now smaller, and those clamouring for a piece of it more numerous. Potential sponsors were also being offered options in different motorsport series and, indeed, in other sports altogether, so that for many truck race teams it was a long period of suspense (for some the suspense continues) trying to figure out how, if at all, they would race this season.
And when the MAN she drove last season was sold to a team in the British championship, Steffi’s prospects seemed even more remote. That truck, like so many others, had originated in the Hahn workshops in Altensteig. Over the winter break Jochen Hahn and his merry men were primarily focused on building his own new truck, which was shown in brand new livery at the toy exhibition in Nuremberg in February. Reinert’s truck also was in dire need of an overhaul, but when they turned their attention to it they also began work in parallel on a third race truck, under the premise that a show truck would always come in handy.
Now that show truck is being turned into a fully raceworthy competition machine, albeit one that has had a difficult birth. That’s because even René Reinert wasn’t 100 per cent sure he’d be able to race a complete season this year. His company, which owns almost 800 trucks and employs more than 1,100, wants its boss around more, what with competition in the logistics industry getting hotter by the hour. At the same time, truck racing remains an important marketing platform for Reinert Logistic.
In the end, it was up to Jochen Hahn to exercise all the psychological abilities God gifted to Swabians, with the happy result that not only will Reinert race full-season (of course, if you’ve contracted the truck racing virus…we all know the rest), but also Steffi.
There’s the possibility, though, that the latter might not be race-ready in time for the season-opener in Spielberg.

Impressions: