During the last weekend of September the best truckers of Europe met at Lausitzring - a brand new circuit in the eastern part of Germany. The circuit is located about 60 kilometres north of Dresden in the direction of Berlin. The costs of its construction on the total area of 570 hectares were DEM 310 million. The circuit was officially opened in August last year. It has the capacity of 120 thousand spectators, including 25 thousand places on the main stand, which is 370 metres long and 30 metres high. The circuit offers different tracks for different categories including speed track of two miles. This was the place of a serious accident of former Italian F1 pilot Zanardi in mid-September. The track for cars and trucks is 4,5 km long and it is highly demanding because the long straights are followed by sharp and difficult turns.
As usually, the transport of our team was started by the mechanics. They arrived to the place of the last but one event of this year's European Cup on Wednesday evening. On Thursday they were mostly busy with erecting the pit structures. Other team members were arriving during the following days.
A first opportunity for the pilots to test the absolutely unknown circuit was available on Friday with the schedule of two rides. The racing programme itself started as usually on Saturday with three free practices. Unfortunately Gerd had hardly any possibility to learn something about the circuit because he was challenged by technical problems right from morning hours. Turbochargers were sources of most of the problems and because of that our pilot could not make a single full-speed lap. Total replacement of the whole engine did not help either and the team was just approaching the time practice of late afternoon. Although at last Gerd started for the time practice, he could not continue properly and had to give up already at the very beginning.
In the evening, team leader Martin Koloc explained: "We have already identified the reason for the failure. But we still do not know how get rid of it. This is a left-handed circuit, causing certain resonance of the chassis. The resonances get together exactly where both turbochargers are located. Main axles of the turbochargers get into vertical vibrations and subsequently the propellers hit the walls. The result is clear - turbochargers will fail. We will try to modify slightly the fastening of both turbochargers."
The mechanics did so and during the warm-up of Sunday Gerd could at last test the circuit. Still he was very much concerned with any improper sound getting out of the truck, and therefore he was remaining reluctant to go ahead at full speed. Despite that he was making times around place seven and Martin decided to replace the engine by a more powerful one. "We will return the original one there because that has been tested well and we know the engine was not the source of problems. "
After unsuccessful practices Gerd had to start to the qualifying race from the last row. He started very well and during the first lap he managed to overtake four trucks of Group B. That took him to eighth place just behind the Mercedes of Steve Parrish. During the next three laps it seemed Gerd was studying the Englishman in order to find a best place to overtake. In the second half of the race, however, the distance started to be greater and in the end Gerd finished eighth, losing about 10 seconds to the pilot ahead of him.
"Telemetry failed to work and I had no information on the speed. I was afraid of disqualification, and therefore I had to be extremely cautious. Still in speed control I could rely on my feelings only," said the pilot after having returned to the pits. Despite all efforts he could not avoid penalization for exceeding the maximum speed limit of 160 km/h on two occasions. The penalization of 10 + 20 seconds took him down again to the last sixth row of starting grid for the cup race.
Fortunately Gerd made an excellent start again and in the rain, which was getting ever heavier, he started to make his way forward. Almost 50,000 spectators with numerous Gerd's fans could enjoy seeing him on sixth place in the middle of the race. This was framed by enthusiastic cheers, waving of black-yellow-red flags and intensive roar of horns and sirens. Under pressure of the spectators Gerd was driving Buggyra forward and made a slight mistake. On slippery wet surface he got out of the track and drove shortly on the grass. Faure immediately took advantage of this situation and Gerd dropped by one place. But the principal misfortune affected him only in the very end of the race. When entering the last lap the power steering failed. Despite all that Gerd was officially classified as eighth and similarly to the qualifying race he added another three points for total ranking.
The last event of the series will take place on Jarama circuit in Spain during the next weekend of 6 to 7 October 2001.
