Slovakia Ring Preliminary Report

11. July 2018Slovakiaring - The 4th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Slovakia Ring near Bratislava this weekend will be followed by the mid-season break, which – this year – comes exactly halfway through the championship. The first half of the season took seven weeks; the racers will be off for like duration, at least on the face of it. In truth, they will be hard at work for most of this period. The high technical standard of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, and the unprecedented performance parity between the top seven, requires continuous and intensive development if a team is to stay in the mix.
Sure, there will have to be a few days to unwind, because the second half of the season is going to be rather stressful with four races in five weeks, in addition to which some pilots and teams have important PR commitments at the Automechanika in Frankfurt and the IAA in Hanover.
But before all that, they’ve still got to get through the weekend at the Slovakia Ring. The truck racers don’t have very much experience with the longest and likely fastest circuit in the ETRC; they were here for the first time only last year. Since then they’ll certainly have analysed their data threadbare and come up with setups tailored for the arduous racing environment.
Be that as it may, four-times champion Jochen Hahn (GER, Iveco), who leads in the standings, and defending champ Adam Lacko (CZE, Freightliner), his closest rival, remain the favourites to come away with the biggest points scores. No less competitive here will be Norbert Kiss. No other truck racer has driven as many laps of this circuit as the Hungarian twice-champ (Mercedes), even if his experience here has been almost exclusively racing cars. None of the other entrants is as well acquainted with the track and its peculiarities.
This trio set the pace last year, though Hahn’s compatriot and „Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ teammate Steffi Halm, and resurgent Spaniard Antonio Albacete (MAN), not only finished on the podium but also won a race apiece.
The pilots and their trucks are so closely matched that the three MAN pilots Sascha Lenz, René Reinert (both GER), and Ryan Smith, as likewise German Iveco pilot André Kursim, are all equally in the running for podium places.
Just 40 points separate the second-placed driver from the seventh, while Hahn’s advantage over Lacko is 42 points. That isn’t necessarily evidence of overwhelming dominance but rather a reflection of how much more competitive it is at the top this year. And a 42-points lead doesn’t signify a walkover – a driver can collect up to 60 points over one weekend, and there are five of those still to go.
There are a total of 19 entries for the Truck Race of Slovakia, and the paddock is going to be packed. The supporting programme includes a round of the FIA World Touring Car Cup, for which there are 26 entries. Even if most of the action in this series happens in the pits – in contrast to truck racing, where the teams work on their trucks in the open-access paddock, – the WTCR service trucks and hospitality marquees will all be part of the paddock. There’ll be lots for the fans to see and do.