First tests in Most

14. April 2019Thirteen race trucks, five of them Ivecos, have been entered for the Easter-week tests in Most initiated by Jochen Hahn. The field also includes four MANs, three Buggyras, and a Renault.
The crème de la crème of European truck racing will rendezvous, as they have for the past few years, at the Autodrom in Most, which hosts the fifth round of this year’s FIA championship. Of the top eight pilots last season, only Hungarian Norbert Kiss and his Mercedes aren’t coming.
For a few years now, Most is where truck racing’s elite gather for the first time before the actual start of the season. Getting there is only a day’s journey for most teams, and more importantly, they’ve been able to record a wealth of comparative data in a variety of weather conditions that require a diversity of setups you probably wouldn’t need anywhere else.
As you might expect, they aren’t here only to fine-tune their own trucks’ performances, but also to keep an eye on where their competitors are at.
Not that the lap times are necessarily declarative of actual strength – you never know who has really let the cat out of the sack, and who is holding their cards close to their chests. The circuit is divided into several timed sectors, and a pilot may take it easy in some and then step on it in others. The team collates the data to construct an accurately representative lap, while the competition can at best guess at the outcome.