Another fantastic race weekend in the 2023 Goodyear FIA European Truck Racing Championship, we now have 5 podiums in total, moving us up to 3rd place overall in The Promoters Cup and sitting 10th of the 14 trucks in the Championship standings. Slovakia is the hardest and most technical track in the Championship according to the other experienced drivers but we managed to improve our pace lap on lap.
The weather caused delays throughout the weekend with temperatures of 27 degrees mixed with heavy
rain showers which brought safety concerns for the FIA Officials.
Saturday was a very wet day of racing, our driver John Newell said that it was the worst conditions he had ever raced in and was unable to see much through the heavy rain whilst travelling at 100 miles per hour. He did a brilliant job, qualifying 11th, less than a second behind 10th and 9th place, the team were happy with the lap time improvements.
Race 1 was hit with delays as the track held the water, John held 11th place in the Championship and 4th in the Promoters Cup, we saw huge improvements on lap times, braking data and truck
performance as the race went on.
Race 2 saw further improvements and our first podium of the weekend, Slovakia brought huge
crowds, lots of fans lining up for autographs and photos with the drivers, most of these people were
commercial vehicle drivers, operators or truck enthusiasts, they created a vibrant atmosphere with celebrations lasting into the night.
●
Sundays Race 3 is where the drama happened, John started in P11, he had a great start even after a red flag and fought up to 8th place, the commentator acknowledged how well we were doing to chase down Luis Recuenco in the Green IVECO whilst defending Jose Rodriguez behind, we took a few hits to the rear bumper before Rodriguez took a gamble, hoping John would pull out of the challenge, John held his ground and Rodriguez hit us hard into the barrier damaging the front bumper, the side panels and
the drivers door, this resulted in a “Did Not Finish” and a recovery truck to take us from the track. Rodriguez was called to race control for the dangerous move and truck contact which is not
permitted in the Championship. Thankfully the parts supplied by our sponsors along with the skills, hard work and passion of the team meant we were able to
repair the damage quickly and return to the track to take another 3rd place trophy in Race 4.
Once again we have seen a boost in our social media interactions and received lot’s of interviews
and TV coverage all over Europe. We were selected by Goodyear to be part of a tyre test on the Monday to test a new compound tyre, it is good to be part of the research and development of new products. We started by racing round the track doing 4 laps on the current Goodyear tyre, this was then temperature checked, tested, analysed and photographed before repeating once again with a new compound tyre.
The next race weekend will be held at Poznan, Poland on 24th and 25th June which will be a new track to everyone, Poznan is a new addition to the Championship and we are looking forward to racing at the home of 2 of our team members, it would be great to see you there.
