Fourteen full-season racers and five teams

14. April 2016Since 1 April, exactly four weeks before the 2016 season officially starts, truck racing fans have had the list of full-season entrants for the European Truck Racing Championship up here on truckracing.de / truckrace.info to check out. Since then, the drivers have also crystallised into five pairings that will contest the team championship. In some cases the pairs transcend actual physical teams, as – most notably – the first-ever all-women team “WOW! Women on Wheels”.
ETRA managing director Rolf Werner announced the new team at the Truck Grand Prix curtain-raiser for the press.
The WOW! team consists of the two German MAN racers Ellen Lohr and Stephanie Halm, Lohr driving for Truck Sport Bernau and Halm for Reinert Racing. Steffi’s Reinert Racing colleague and team boss René Reinert has already teamed up – as in previous years – with thrice-champ Jochen Hahn in the Reinert Adventure team.
After title defender Norbert Kiss’s switch to tankpool24, the Hungarian now teams up with his German Mercedes brand brother André Kursim, and not with Frenchman Anthony Janiec (MAN) anymore. The Lion team, in turn, had to look for a new partner for Janiec and has settled on Sascha Lenz. The German youngster, a race-by-race entrant last year, will now be on the prowl for team points in his MAN.
The fifth team in the top league is the 2015 champions Buggyra Racing. The Czechs’ veteran driver David Vršecký has pulled out, making room for Jiri Forman. The 22-year-old will now defend the title with his Czech compatriot Adam Lacko.
The only solo drivers remaining are, once again, Dutchman Erwin Kleinnagelvoort in a Scania, the two MAN pilots Frankie Vojtíšek (CZE) and Eduardo Rodrigues (POR), and the German Gerd Körber in the Schwabentruck Iveco.
After all we’ve heard over the last few months, it’s no surprise that Spaniard Antonio Albacete, one of the most steadfast – and successful – truck racers in Europe, does not figure on the list of full-season pilots. As everybody knows, the Madrilène’s primary sponsor has withdrawn completely from motorsport and is now concentrating exclusively on football.

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