European Truck Racing / Truck Race Information Service

ADAC Mittelrhein Cup at the Truck-Grand-Prix

11. July 2016The Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring has always been about racing above everything else, and apart from the climactic round of FIA European Truck Racing Championship season the event also encompasses the races of the Mittelrhein Cup, the results of which count towards the British Truck Racing Championship of the BTRA. Here, as you’d expect, the field consists almost exclusively of Britishers, barring a handful of Dutchmen who also compete in the championship on the isles.
This year there were two MRC races instead of three as in 2015 (a normal BTRA weekend has five races). A massive 28 trucks were at the start, among them five that were also entered in the FIA ETRC. The MAN of the French brothers Robineau was one of those with the most packed schedules. While Jérémy was on the points chase in the ETRC, Thomas essayed the truck in the MRC, albeit just for fun - he’s a points contender in the French championship.
Even “King of the Ring” Heinz-Werner Lenz was a dual-starter. The thrice European champ now takes part in the TGP for the joy of it, not out of any abiding sporting ambition.
The competitive mantle has passed on to son Sascha, making him quasi “Prince of the Ring”. Sascha is driving his first full FIA European Truck Racing Championship season this year in an MAN. And considering how much the Lenzes “owe” it to their fans, Sascha simply couldn’t give the MRC a miss. But then he decided to forgo the first race, although he was to start from the second row of the grid. That’s because, by virtue of having finished 8th in the first FIA ETRC race, he’d secured pole position on the reversed grid for the Saturday’s second race. The young German understandably didn’t want to risk any damage in a potentially scrappy MRC outing – and they always are – and gamble away his prospects.
That cautiousness eventually amounted to nothing - damage resulting from a collision with English MAN driver Ryan Smith forced him out of the ETRC race.
It was the said Ryan Smith that took a pole-to-flag victory in the first MRC race, truncated three laps from the finish because of a stalled truck in the chicane before the final bend. Heinz-Werner Lenz was the best non-Brit finisher in 9th, a whisker ahead of Thomas Robineau. The Frenchman had started from the pits, not a place he’d have liked to. After his brother had finished the preceding ETRC race in the MAN, the few minutes that remained after the lifting of parc fermé weren’t sufficient to get the truck ready for the grid.
Smith won the second MRC race as well, albeit in much more dramatic fashion than on the day before. Following the regulation the grid for this race consisted of the first eight finishers from Saturday’s race starting in reverse order. That meant Oly Janes was on pole in his Freightliner, and Smith on 8th. And, as you have it in the ETRC, the stronger trucks surged forward at the start, with the end result that the race was red-flagged in the first lap, one truck hobbling painfully back to the pits with a blown tyre.
Only after the damaged truck was safely out of harm’s way was the race restarted.
Sascha Lenz, whose withdrawal from the first race relegated him to the end of the 28-strong grid, had made up a couple of places on the first lap before the interruption. Now he had to start from the rear all over again. The restart was somewhat less frenetic, but the race itself was quite dramatic towards the finish. The field sorted itself out after the first couple of laps and David Jenkins (MAN) looked on course for victory. Heinz-Werner Lenz had packed it in after only three laps because of a burst tyre, but sonny Sascha drove a brilliant race and was in 5th place after only six laps. He then came up on the frontrunners and was held up by reigning BTRA champ Mathew Summerfield (MAN).
In the last two laps things started to happen faster than we could figure.
First Lenz made a most courageous move into third place, to the absolute delight of the rapturous crowd, with former European champion Stuart Oliver (Volvo) in his wake. A half-lap before the flag a slugfest erupted between the two frontrunners, Jenkins and Smith, winner of the first MRC race. Smith came out on top, going on to win this race as well.
Smith thus defended his lead in Division 1 of the BTRA Championship. (The British series also has a Division 2, in which the older and less powerful trucks compete.) The oldest truck in the race, a 51-year-old Ford driven by Dutchman Jan van Holland, was 11 or 12 seconds slower a lap than the leaders but soldiered on to the finish.
There were, accordingly, more than one prizegiving, the first for the MRC and then separate ones for BTRA Division 1 and Division 2. The dignitary at these ceremonies was a man – invited by Meritor – who everyone in the FIA ETRC is badly missing, Spanish thrice-champion Antonio Albacete.