FIA awarded the best truckers and our team
21.10.2013
The best truck racers of the past European Truckracing Championship’s season accepted awards for their performances. The FIA representatives presented them again, like in the two preceding years, directly at the French circuit of Le Mans. It has always been Jochen Hahn to accept the trophy there – and the situation was no different this year, as he completed the golden hattrick. Although a Czech team driver was missing from the winners‘ podium in the end, our team came to collect a bronze medal in the so called „Constructors“ trophy“.
‘All those four seasons we’ve been racing in the series there’s nothing we want more than the individual title. We don’t want to set ourselves less ambitious goals though, even more so after we’ve gained a silver and two bronze medals in the previous seasons. However, this year we’ve had one of the most difficult seasons so far. I must admit that the competitors were simply better. There’s a clear headstart in the development but we’d really like to catch up with them and make the championship more interesting,’ said our team’s boss Mario Kress.
The battle over the first position was fought mainly by two men – Jochen Hahn from Germany and Antonio Albacete from Spain, both on MAN. Who would be the one to celebrate the champion’s title this year hadn’t been clear until the last race in Le Mans and so the whole truck racing world had to wait literally until the last race. The Spaniard was leading the championship since round four at the Austrian Red Bull Ring. He was starting the final tenth round with an eleven-point headstart, yet he didn’t manage to use the advantage to his benefit and eventually, he finished five points behind Hahn. And so Hahn became the first pilot in the modern history to win three times in a row. ‘Congratulations to Jochen, but what about making a change?‘ smiled our pilot Adam Lacko.
Misfortune befell Albacete twice this year. He lost the European Championship’s title to Hahn in the last moment and after years of reigning the home scene, he got beaten by Adam, who is the first non-Spanish winner in the Spanish Championships. However, the native from Čeladná wished to climb up the ranking of the European Championships, where he always finished third in the past two years. This time he was forced to yield the podium position to his former team colleague Markus Oestreich.
A tough fight was fought over the unpopular fourth position. The last weekend decided it would be Norbert Kiss to end up there, though he had an equal score with the Czech pilot David Vršecký before the event. Anyway, fifth place seems to be Vršecký‘s destiny in the past three years, including this season. The pilot of the Roudnice-based Buggyra team thus starts the list of Czech pilots in the overall ranking. Right below comes the name of our Adam and then his colleague Markus Bösiger. Position eight goes to the Fin Mika Makinen, nine to Germany’s René Reinert and the elite ten is concluded by the talented, only seventeen-year-old Hungarian teenager Benedek Major. ‘Benedek is an amazing new truckracing talent and I, as well as others, believe he has a great future I front of him,‘ commented our Markus.
The team competition, labelled analogically to the Formula 1 as the „constructors‘ trophy“, was seized by the Albacete-Oestreich duo from Truck Sport Lutz Bernau. Silver goes to Hahn and Makinen from Castrol Team Hahn Racing and bronze belongs to our racing team Adam and Markus.
