Truck racing
The term truck racing or truck racing is used to describe motorsport races with trucks on circuit circuits. The European racing series is the European Truck Racing Championship , which is held under the patronage of the FIA .
history
The idea for this was only imported to Europe by Dutch motorsport fans in the late 1970s. They had seen comparable competitions in the USA, which were held there on unpaved slopes. In 1980 the Dutch organized a demonstration event on the Zandvoort circuit . The following year the Stichting Truck Racing Power Festival (STPF) was founded on May 23rd . This organized the first truck race in Europe, which took place on a circuit near Nijmegen . At the same time, the new motorsport discipline was developing in France, with an event entitled 24 heures camion for the first time in 1981 on the famous Le Mans circuit .
Due to the audience response, truck racing activities became internationalized in 1983. This year there was a race in Assen (Netherlands) in which British drivers also took part for the first time. In 1984 the series was expanded to include races in Great Britain ( Brands Hatch and Donington Park ). This development led racing teams, racetrack owners and organizers to set up the European Truck Racing Organization (ETRO) as an interest group. The ETRO (later renamed ETRA, European Truck Racing Association ) set up in 1985 for the first time a European Truck Championship , which consisted of seven races. ETRO and ETRA remained the host of the European Championship for almost ten years; In 1994 the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) took over the patronage of the racing series, which was initially run as the FIA European Cup and received the status of an FIA European Championship from 2006.
Trucks
In the early years, truck racing was carried out with standard road trucks. The protagonists usually came to the racetrack with their articulated lorries, uncoupled the trailers and competed with their tractors. They were divided into three classes, which were initially based on power: A to 300 hp, B 300 to 360 hp, C 360 to 400 hp. Later the distinction was made according to the cubic capacity (up to 12, 12 to 14 and over 14 liters). When the EM series landed at the FIA, a high level of professionalism had already set in. The trucks were specially prepared for the races, and components such as tires, brakes (with water cooling), turbochargers and injection pumps were also adapted for racing. A first high point of this development was the construction of a special hood truck by the driver Gerd Körber or his company Bickel-Tuning in Rheinau. Körber won with the Phoenix, in which components from MAN series production were installed in addition to thoroughbred racing technology 1991 the European title in its class.
The FIA has carried out a new classification of the racing trucks into a series-related category (Race Class) and a prototype series (Super Race Class), in which mainly the factory-supported teams gathered. After a few years, the cars in the Super Race Class showed an output of around 1500 hp with a torque of around 5000 Nm. The five-ton trucks accelerated from 0 to 100 in less than four seconds. The costly upgrade led to a dead end from which the Super Race Class could not find a way out, so that the manufacturers initially withdrew from truck racing with prototypes. The class was finally removed from the regulations at the beginning of the 2006 season. Since then, only vehicles in the near-series Race Class have been at the start. In this category, certain components - for example the driver's cab - have to be taken over unchanged from homologated road trucks. Nevertheless, the performance of the most powerful vehicles is 1250 HP and well over 5000 Nm torque.
driver
In the early years, full-time truck drivers dominated truck racing on the circuit. It was only with the start of the prototype series that professional motorsport enthusiasts increasingly took over the cockpits. Drivers like the British Rod Chapman and record champion Steve Parrish had already earned merits in other motorsport disciplines. Chapman was a well-known rallycrosser in Europe in the 1970s , while Parrish had raced motorcycles for a long time . The later European champions Fritz Kreutzpointner, Markus Oestreich (both Germany) and Harri Luostarinen (Finland) came from the touring car and rally scene. The European champion of 2007, Markus Bösiger (Switzerland), used to be several times world champion in motorcycle sidecar drivers and with Slim Borgudd (Sweden) even a former Formula 1 driver (and ABBA drummer) took part in the truck for some time. EM part. Borgudd proved his skills by winning two European Championship titles.
Racetracks
In recent years, the European Truck Racing Championship has mostly consisted of nine races, on race tracks in Belgium ( Circuit Zolder ), France ( Le Mans and Circuit de Nogaro ), Italy ( Misano Adriatico ), Spain ( Circuit de Pedralbes , Circuito de Albacete and Circuito del Jarama ) and the Czech Republic ( Autodrom Most ). The highlight of the season has been the German Truck Grand Prix on the Nürburgring for many years , at which the ADAC Mittelrhein, the organizer, had a cumulative number of up to 220,000 visitors. In 2007, the 21st edition of the spectacle, the official number of visitors was around 180,000. Now that Formula 1 will no longer make an annual guest appearance in the Eifel, the Truck Grand Prix is taking on the role of the top-selling motorsport event on the German race track in the calculations of the organizers and the regional economy.
Further series
In addition to the FIA championship, there are also national truck racing championships in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, France and Spain. Truck racing was more professional in Australia and New Zealand. For many years there was a series there which, in terms of professionalism and audience interest, was quite comparable to the parallel races in Europe. In 2002 the championship was ended during the current season due to dissonances between drivers or teams on the one hand and organizers on the other. In South America, the main focus of Formula Truck is in Brazil and has been managed by the O Carreteiro Racing organization since 1996 and, like the European Championship, comprised nine events in 2007.