Vršecký Celebrated His Return to the Race Trucks Division by a Victory
More than thirty racing drivers of the Racing Trucks Division made it to the opening event of this year´s championship held at the Catalunya Racing Circuit, off Barcelona. For the first time ever in the history of truck racing, the Racing Trucks Division has become the only division under the umbrella of FIA. Tough fights in the "Super" group will thus take place only in the framework of national cups.
The maturity and prevalence of the former participants of what used to be the top-notch truck division showed as early as during the first measured practice session on Saturday, in which they took four of the first five places. Although we had to wait for the results almost until the time when the trucks were lining up on the roster of the qualification race, we were very pleased by our couple taking the first two pole positions. As we learned later, David won his pole position by a mere three thousandths of a second!!! However, both of them beat by more than a second a years long circuit record lap time, whose holder since 1999 had been no one else but Martin Koloc.
The two were also off to an excellent start and David could take the leading position after the first corner only thanks to his pole position; he even succeeded in building up a small lead. However, Gerd was under sustained attacks by local driver Albacete. As the paxk was into the fourth lap, their duel peaked in a brutal collision, after which Gerd could hardly keep the truck on the truck and dropped to the fourth place behind Austrian driver Allgäuer. David finished the race with a comfortable lead, the second place was finally taken by Allgäuer, while Albacete finished third. In the very last lap, Gerd had to swallow yet another bitter pill, as Vojtíšek and Bösiger from Switzerland stormed past his damaged Buggyra. The cup race was on much more even terms, although the only change in the first six places (compared to the qualification race) took place shortly after the start, when Gerd overtook Bösiger, with nothing else in the remaining 15 laps. Also worth mentioning was yet another substantial improvement of the circuit record time achieved by David.
David also improved the circuit record time during the measured practice session on Sunday, with just one second to beat to achieve the fastest time that super trucks had achieved last year, which indicates a major technological development of what used to be a much weaker truck division. In the last moments of the measured practice session, Albacete, who had been Buggyra´s driver in the previous year, took care of yet another entry in the record times log. David kept his second place from Gerd, although his lead was by one thousandth of a second shorter than on Saturday.
The biggest blow to the team´s weekend efforts was dealt by a fractured brake disc on David´s truck shortly before the start. In spite of every effort of the mechanics, his roster slot remained empty. Furthermore, one could hardly expect Spanish stewards to be willing to wait, even just few tens of seconds... Albacete won the race easily, followed by Bösiger and Vojtíšek, while Gerd took points for the fifth place, although he experienced some minor problems after the start.
Gerd´s problems survived into the cup race, where he had to abandon the race because of steering problems in the third round. At that time, David was fighting his way from the last (29th) place halfway through the pack and succeeded in catching up with the fastest group. He managed to take a place among the top ten drivers, slowly getting up to ultimately finish in the sixth place.
The opening event indicated that the team´s hard work during the last months prior to the opening event had borne fruition and that the new Buggyra MK-R01 specials with the well proven duo of pilots would rank among candidates for the victory in this year´s championship, some minor difficulties in the beginning notwithstanding.
