Sixteen full-season entries for 2021

25. May 2021This year too, COVID isn’t going to pass the FIA European Truck Racing Championship over without leaving its mark – but it’s certainly not going to throw the 2021 season out of kilter.
However, it is due to the pandemic that only seven races are scheduled this season. But if you imagined that corona was going to thin out the entry list, that won’t happen.
Having earlier delayed the start of the season, the FIA also extended the cutoff date for registrations till last Friday, the day on which the first round would have kicked off in Misano according to the original calendar.
Motorsport’s top governing body released a list of 16 entries. There will also be those who register to race in one or other individual event – so-called “race-by-race” pilots.
We didn’t have a champion in 2020, so six-times titlist Jochen Hahn, last crowned in 2019, still carries the #1 on his Iveco. He and compatriot Steffi Halm in the Schwabentruck Iveco will spearhead the Italian truckmaker’s team challenge as „Die Bullen von Iveco“. Germans André Kursim and René Reinert round out the Iveco quartet.
Twice that number – half the field, to a MAN – will race a machine that bears the badge of the historic German manufacturer. Heading up the Bavarian brigade is a trident consisting of former champions Antonio Albacete (ESP) and Norbert Kiss (HUN), and German champ apparent Sascha Lenz.
Munich’s merry men include three Brits – Shane Brereton, Jamie Anderson, and Tom O’Rourke, – another German (Clemens Hecker), and a Frenchman (Anthony Janiec).
The three top MAN pilots aforementioned aren’t the only ones you can expect to make life on track tough for defending champ Jochen Hahn; Czech mate Adam Lacko is in the mix as well, having won the title once and finished runner-up thrice in recent years.
The Buggyra squad also features the two youngest participants, 16-year-old Aliyyah Koloc (CZE) and 20-year-old Teó Calvet (FRA).
Tankpool24 pilot Steffen Faas will pilot the only Scania in the field. On his return to truck racing last year the German came on strong with the all-new truck, collecting points enough to classify seventh after the two weekends run. The tankpool24 Scania is going to be one of the frontrunners on the grid – if only for the striking beauty of its styling.
Five pairings have registered for the team championship: „Die Bullen von Iveco“ (Hahn / Halm); the MAN teams TOR (Brereton / O’Rourke), Titan (Albacete / Kiss), and Löwenpower (Lenz / Anderson); and the Freightliner duo of Calvet and Lacko) as Buggyra Racing.