The new season was anticipated with suspense because as usual, it was bound to bring many surprises. What mattered most to our team was how well Ludovic Faure has adapted to Buggyra, having replaced Gerd Körber, and how the new Volkswagen trucks of the Deutsche Post team will perform. A surprise was the absence of Fin Luostarinen (due to illness), who was replaced by an unknown German pilot Drückenmüller.
Free practice on Saturday took place on a still dry track, and was dominated by David, who won both the second and third free practice sessions. In timed practice, Albacete had the best starting time, and managed to keep ahead of David and Östreich for the first few minutes. However, unlike in the free practice, Ludovic managed to accelerate dramatically, getting into fourth position, with only a few moments behind the others. Mid-time in the 40-minute practice, Östreich went into lead twice. Shortly afterward, following a brief stop in the boxes, David returned to a second position. It seemed that the order will remain unchanged till the end, but in the last few minutes, Albacete with his red Buggyra still managed to advance to the Qualifying race. The fact that there was a difference of only 15 hundredths of a second between Östreich and David shows how close to each other their skills were. At the end of Saturday's practice all trucks were in good order, and the mechanics only had to carry out regular maintenance. The weather got much colder though, and it began raining heavily.
It went on raining throughout the night, and during the Sunday warm-up and the Qualifying race. Östreich used his best position after start, and immediately went into lead, a few moments ahead of Albacete. David was third and Drückenmüller kept behind him during the first lap. The leading duo of Östreich and Albacete slightly increased their lead and Ludovic began to get further ahead of Drückenmüller, whom he had passed in the second lap. From the fifth lap on, David achieved a few best lap times, and he even finished the eight lap second behind Albacete. In the beginning of the ninth lap, Albacete with his wonderful driving skills briefly went into lead, but Östreich soon arrested his offensive. Unfortunately, David's hopes were dashed due to an engine problem. Ludovic also experienced problems after sliding off the track, but he was able to come back into the race, and even win back fourth place.
Östreich pulled off a best start in the Final race, immediatiely tailed by David in second place. Albacete did not want to settle for third place, and after two laps pressed for second place. He immediately began attacking Östreich's position, but this did not pay off. A collision sent him off the track, he hit a barrier, and had to finish the race early. His battle was taken over by David, who provoked Östreich to make a mistake, and thus loose his first position. Two laps later, Östreich was also passed by Ludovic, who pressed David until the very end. However, David drove with precision and didn't let Östreich snatch victory away from him at the last minute. Third place came to Östreich with a loss of 15 seconds. An hour after the race however, he was disqualified for a collision with Albacete, and his position was filled by Drückenmüller.
