Grand Prix Camions d’Albi Day 1 – Two wins on the trot for Janiec
22. October 2016Albi - Albi is a picturesque provincial town of about 50,000 inhabitants in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France some 80 km northeast of Toulouse. Many thousands of tourists come visiting every year, particularly attracted by the episcopal quarter, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that consists of the Sainte-Cécile (Saint Cecelia’s) cathedral and the Palais de la Berbie (the bishop’s palace). Art-lovers are drawn to the numerous museums, the most famous of which is Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in the Palais de la Berbie. Till today, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec remains the town’s best-known son.
Less well-known is Albi’s historic racetrack, which hosted the French Grand Prix exactly 70 years ago, the race in which Italian legend Tazio Nuvolari took the last win of his career in top-flight motorsport. In subsequent years, when the F1 races in France were held elsewhere, Circuit d’Albi continued to feature on the calendars of the Formula 2 and Formula 3 series. In recent decades only national car and motorcycle races have taken place here, and the most recent events have almost without exception been closed to the public.
Over the last years a group of enthusiasts has been working to breathe life into the racing scene here. The 5th and final round of the Coupe de France Camions is an important part of that endeavour.
A preliminary report in the regional daily La Dépêche singles out Fabien Calvet for his efforts to orchestrate the finale of the Coupe de France Camions at this 3,551m circuit.
Not only does the president of the Truck Race Organisation TRO oversee the truck racing activities of the French motorsport federation FFSA; “Monsieur Camion” (Mr Truck), as the locals call him, also has a very special relationship to Albi, the town his grandfather was once mayor of.
After the finale of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship in Le Mans, in which he was also intimately involved, Calvet was off to Albi to make sure beforehand that everything was going as it should. For one thing, flight operations at the airstrip on the infield, which is unusually heavily trafficked for its size, have had to be completely stopped. The airfield is needed for the showtrucks, an essential part of every truck racing weekend in France.
Then there’s the problematic low-slung road bridge across the track, the paddock’s only connection for cars to the outside world. Not only is it extremely narrow, allowing movement (regulated by lights) in only one direction at a time; it’s also got a load limit of 15 tonnes. As a result a way had to be found to get the trucks directly onto the track and from there into the paddock.
The underside of the bridge, moreover, is only 3 metres above the track surface – Circuit d’Albi, after all, has its origins in the fourth decade of the last century. Race cars are usually quite flat, and nobody ever thought ahead to the day trucks would race here!
The cabs of race trucks in FIA spec are – at least – 2.5 metres tall. Those entered in the Coupe de France Camions have almost all had a former life in the ETRC, and so are at least this tall, if not a bit taller. To minimise the risk of an accident, the portion of the track leading up to, and under, the bridge has been designated a fixed neutral zone – overtaking forbidden.
Be that as it may, the first race ended with an accident – but that had nothing to do with the bridge. But we get ahead of ourselves.
The title favourite, Thomas Robineau, had – somewhat unexpectedly – led qualifying in his MAN and thus captured pole. Everybody had expected Anthony Janiec in that position after MAN’s French lion finished a strong sixth in the ETRC standings with six podiums and one win. But Janiec has played only a bit part in this year’s French championship – in Le Castellet, even if he took all the silverware there, – having otherwise concentrated entirely on the ETRC.
Not surprisingly, Robineau chose discretion over adventurism in the race, ceding the lead to Janiec and taking extreme care not to get caught out as a third party in a crash – nor be overtaken by his closest rival, Renault pilot Lionel Montagne. That wasn’t difficult; Robineau had come to Albi with a comfortable cushion of 26 points.
So there was no action to write home about at the front. Far down the field, however, the picture was quite different. Christophe Miguel’s Scania went off into the tyre barrier, and the race was stopped for the duration of the recovery. But only a few laps after the restart a brake disc broke on Michel Bassanelli’s truck. The DAF careened off the track and tipped over onto its side. The race was broken off once again.
By now it was time for the second race to have started, and so the classification for Race 1 was drawn up based on the racers’ times from each of the two part-races. Janiec was pronounced winner ahead of Robineau and Montagne, but the drivers were awarded half points because the full distance hadn’t been completed. Robineau now held a lead of 29.5 points, with a maximum of 40 still to be won.
As in the FIA ETRC, the second race of the day in the French championship also starts with a reversed grid, albeit with only the first six in inverted order. Janiec, accordingly, started from 6th, with Robineau alongside and Montagne directly ahead. The Portuguese José Rodrigues was in pole position in the Team14 Renault.
The lead was initially seized by Rodrigues’ compatriot and Renault colleague José Teodosio, but neither of the two could break Janiec’s charge. The Lion MAN won his/its second race by a huge margin. Teodosio led a quartet of pursuers across the line, all a second apart. Rodrigues took 3rd ahead of Montagne and Robineau, who now has 221.5 points to his account. Montagne, 28.5 points behind, still has a mathematical chance of overhauling the MAN pilot. Rodrigues, third in the standings, is 35.5 points behind with only 30 still up for grabs.
More pictures in the Photos section.
Impressions:
