2021 FIA European Truck Racing Championship Zolder Free Practice 1

The MV Commercial Racing Team worked throughout the early hours to prep the MAN race truck in readiness for the first of two sessions of free practice on the Zolder Circuit.

The introduction of yet more inclement weather played havoc with set up at the Belgian track. A heavy downpour that started one hour before the first warm-up session had the team waiting to make any necessary changes to the set up of the truck.

With just fifteen to go before the session started, the team moved to a wet race set up, for driver Luke Garrett this posed no problems and would give the team the opportunity to evaluate some of the changes made.

The session started on a wet track and stayed that way until the final minutes of the practice when a dry line appeared, it was interesting to note only 0.5 seconds separated 2^nd to 6^th and less than 1 second separated 7^th to 14^th position.

Luke Garrett in the MV Commercial Racing MAN also enjoyed his first outing on the Belgian track, running as high as tenth early on when the track was at its wettest finally finishing in 14^th place but right amongst those midfield runners.

Norbert Kiss, Jochen Hahn and Sasha Lenz occupied the three fastest times.

Luke spoke after his de-brief and analysis session, ‘We changed the diff from Most because I felt it would help me in my driving style and only having to change gear once in the corner rather than twice like we did at Most, to be honest I have experience of the Zolder circuit and that helps a lot’.

‘We had to come in as we developed a vibration when the track started to dry out, so we are tightening everything up before we go out for the second free practice session’, the MV Commercial team driver added.

‘I am trying to not put myself under as much pressure as I did at Most, it seems to be working and the times to the midfield runners are getting closer’.