For a long time the participation of the Super Race Truck division at Alastaro, Finland, had been uncertain. In the end, the race on this forest circuit went ahead, though the number of contestants was rather low due to the fact that the leading teams didn't want to risk losing points in the event of a FIA boycott. The journey to the venue was costly, technical background not quite up-to-scratch and a only few spectators came to see. A combination of all these factors contributed to the considerable number of absences in the weaker Race Truck class.
During the Saturday training, black clouds passed over Alstaro form time to time, but luckily the circuit remained dry for the whole duration of the event. The technicians tried very hard to optimise David's chassis, and they succeeded at the eleventh hour. In timed practice, David maintained a fourth position, and then a final stop in the boxes bore its fruit. In the last lap, he managed to improve his time by seven tenth of a second, which meant that he was rewarded with third place. Back in the paddock he declared that starting from a second row of the grid on the inner side may at times "when the stars are favourably disposed" offer advantage over starting from the second position of the first row owing to a long series of linked right-turning bends. Ludovic scored a second place, though he was in the lead for virtually all of timed practice. Östreich however, whose team also managed to do well in fine-tuning his truck before the race, snatched the pole position for himself.
David pulled off the start of the qualifying race just as he intended, and for some time managed to maintain a second place right behind Östreich. Then his cooling system begun to malfunction so he was obliged to slow down. This allowed Ludovic, and two laps later Albacete to slip past him, while Drückenmüller soon came very close as well. Shortly before the finish, Ludovic succumbed to technical problems too, and had to pull into the paddock. David eventually picked his way to a respectable third place, which secured him a starting position on the inner side of the track in the next race.
However, in the final race he set off even better than in the qualifyings, and immediately went into lead. For seven rounds, he successfully resisted the sharp attacks of Östreich, who pushed him out of the circuit in the middle of the eight lap. This involuntary "trip" cost David two places, being passed not just by Östreich, but also Ludvoic. But this was not the end of the story. Towards the end of the race, it was Ludovic who got into trouble after his brakes, as well as the engine began to malfunction, and he had to give up his second place to David. Three laps to the finish, he even lost even a third place to Drückenmüller. After the race was over, our racing team filed a complaint against Östreich's style of racing, which FIA rejected upon two hours of deliberations.
In the continual ranking after six races, David has moved into second place, lagging behind Östreich by 16 points. Ludovic is in third place with further two points less.
