The trucks arrived to the circuit of Valencia during the night from Thursday to Friday. Most people from the management of Buggyra Truck Racing Team flew in during Friday. The mechanics were working long hours into the night preparing the truck for the runs on Saturday (replacement of gearbox and differential, adjustment of steering arm, adjustment of chassis for exact balance of weight). They went to bed only around 3 a.m. on Saturday. The programme started on Saturday with three free practices. In Super Race Trucks division eight trucks of group A and nine trucks of group B were presented. Gerd Körber surprised the competitors with excellent third time from the first practice. However, during the second practice Buggyra started to lose power and finished eighth. In the third free practice Gerd had to give up already in the first half of the first 'hot' lap, because of cracked fastening strips of turbocharger inlet. Unfortunately that was not yet an end to bad luck.
Straight at the beginning of measured practice, which is decisive for the grid position in qualification run, a thick white smoke started to develop behind the cockpit of Buggyra. Because of turbocharger failure Gerd had to drive out of the track. The truck had to be towed to the paddock and the mechanics started to work. Ruda Teichert summarized: 'First of all we have to replace both turbochargers, because otherwise the truck is in order, since it was really well prepared for the measured practice. Then we will continue with routine check and maintenance. Hopefully our part of bad luck has been already taken. It is important that the points will be awarded only tomorrow. Although we are going to start from the last row, we will struggle!'
The programme of Sunday started with warm-up, which showed very soon that the problems has not ended at all. After several minutes the temperature of the engine went up too much and Gerd decided rather to go to the paddock. The mechanics continued their efforts immediately. Guided by the engineers and by Martin Koloc they succeeded in locating the failure, which was then immediately repaired. Then Buggyra went to the last row on place 17 of qualification starting grid. Gerd made the start very well and soon he started to move forward. In the finish of the first lap he was already on place 10 and approaching the trucks of the stronger group. Suddenly, he was slowing down again and instead of driving into the next lap he turned to the paddock again. The temperature of the engine was up again and after a short consultation with Martin through the communication system Gerd terminated the run. 'We did not want to destroy the engine completely, and therefore we agreed to go out and to try to repair faulty cooling before the final race,' said Martin in the paddock. Nevertheless, it came out that the problem was more serious to be handled properly in the paddock. The truck drove off for start of the final race, but prior to going to the very first lap, Gerd again turned to the paddock. Therefore we have been leaving Valencia without a single point. 'We have a lot of new telemetric data that await proper evaluation in order to prepare the truck appropriately for the next race. There will not be much time available, because there are two long trips ahead of us and the Misano race will take place in less than two weeks from now on,' concluded Martin Koloc on the appearance in Spain.
And moreover, it is now only 110 days to go to the Most race of the European Cup of Trucks on Circuits - to present the team at the home circuit.
