If you are one of the many people who tune into Eurosport,s excellent TV coverage of the WTCC, you have it easy. Preparing to watch the race means turning on the television and sitting down on your favourite sofa or armchair. But it is not as simple as that for us.
The WTCC teams will have been getting ready for this since the car was returned back to their factory after the last race. Incredibly, even if it is a race in our home country, we will have team members working for many hours before the event preparing the cars. And when we have the "flyaway" races, using container freight, we will have spent even more time. Cars will be stripped down and some preparation work done before the cars are loaded up and sent to another country. When they arrive at their next destination, this pre-race work will be continued until everything is perfect again. Accident damage must also be dealt with and this is guaranteed to make teams very unhappy due to the extra workload.
Gone are the days when the truck rolled up to the garage, two cars and and some toolboxes were taken off, and away we went. It is not unusual for the race car transporters, which we use for the European races, to average 30,000 kilometres each as we drive through Europe. Depending on the size of our team, we may have only one truck but most teams have two. Last year, Chevrolet even had three trucks!!
Each team obviously has its own transport crew who are part of the operation of taking equipment to a race. Regardless of our job, either as a truck driver or assistant, once we get to the race, we are part of the team over the race weekend.
The race mechanics will have a four or five day round trip (Wednesday-Sunday) a 'Truckie', as we are known, may have to drive out and return with his transporter, so we will spend between eight and ten days going to a race and coming back. All of these has to be done within the laws of the EU Drivers Hours Regulations which anyone who drives a truck must adhere to in Europe.
With all the travelling it would not make sense to have to have small diesel tanks, and the refuelling bill can be rather high. A tank takes 500-600 litres, and can cost on average 800-900 Euros, Some of the trucks can have a second fuel tank which can take the total fuel capacity to 1500 litres. With such large amounts of diesel, we can travel from the factory around Europe without needing to refuel. Sometimes, this helps keep the costs down for the teams as we can fill up with diesel in a country that is cheaper than where the team is based. In 2013 the prices across Europe do not vary so much as they did 5 or 10 years ago but if we can save some money, it all helps.
Racing in your home country should be easy but ironically all the teams, have to go through the same complex packing procedure for their home race as they do for races in the further flung reaches of Europe like Hungary, Portugal and Italy.
Then there are other complications the fans never see; when we race in Morocco and Russia in 2013, each truck has to have carnets for every single item on board - that is basically a detailed manifesto of the contents. Since the borders in Europe are now open, we can move from Germany to Italy or Hungary to Slovakia without needing a carnet. We do not have to stop and wait, for a long time, at the borders while our paperwork is checked by customs officials. This is much better for the Truckies and for those of us who can remember crossing borders before the European Union was formed, we would not wish to return to the old days.
Then there are the "flyaways", as they are known in the WTCC fraternity, (Brazil, USA, China, Japan and Macau). A team will typically use one or two containers. The bill for transporting that around the world will run to thousands of euros for each team. The teams freight operations are handled by Weitracon and DHL. After the last race in Europe, containers will arrive at the circuit and everything that was transported in our trucks is put into the containers. Some teams construct a mezzanine floor in their containers so that equipment can be packed away whilst the car or cars sit safely underneath. Any additional freight which the teams want to send can be taken to Antwerp, in Belgium and shipped at a later date. The Yokohama tyres are shipped on a staggered time basis to each "flyaway" race. Air freight services are also available but at a very high cost. The WTCC is not Formula 1 and we just do not have their big finances and sponsorship to pay for this.
The container freight is hardly as simple as putting it on a ship from A to B. Hundreds of tonnes of freight has to be loaded and unloaded. Everything has to have customs clearance and then it has to be transported from the container port to the paddock. The operation is extremely complex and whilst delays happen and ships have been late arriving at their destination, we haven,t missed a race since the WTCC championship started.
Teams must ensure that every single part for the car is available and for it to work perfectly, if a car is to get through two days of practice and qualifying and then the race on Sunday where the points are earned.
For that reason there has to be more than one spare for almost every single part including engines. We also have welding equipment, fluids for the cars, repair jigs and thousands of nuts, bolts, cable ties and electrical supplies. Allowance has to be made, too, for the fact that every racing driver could have an accident or several accidents and damage the bodywork. More spares are carried for the difficult and dangerous street circuit of Macau where the crash barriers are so close they are just asking to be hit. Spare splitters and front and rear wings are essential items in the freight along with spare parts for almost every eventuality.
Anyone who has seen a race team at an airport may have seen team members standing in line at the airport to check-in carrying things that looks suspiciously like a heavily wrapped drive shaft, suspension parts or steering racks. Anything that is not in the containers has to be hand carried to the races by whatever means possible. Sometimes these parts are newly updated or rebuilt items which have come from the teams factory. I have had many a strange encounter at airport customs when you are questioned about why you are carrying parts of a race car as your luggage.
The quantity of parts is so vast and they all have to be accounted for. To make sure they are not too old and close to failure some parts also have a "life" which is basically a "use by date". These include driveshafts and suspension parts which are safety critical items.
The freight has to include tools, generators, compressors, 3 phase electrical cabling for the garages, lighting marketing equipment, sensitive test equipment packed in foam-cushioned boxes, the public relations materials, promotional items, team clothing and overalls, maybe a fridge and definitely tea and coffee making facilities.
When race teams first started using purpose built, race car transporters, they probably carried about 2 tonnes of equipment. In 2013, our trucks can carry 20 tonnes. Today the size of the trucks is determined by the governments and the roads. So instead of getting even bigger trucks, teams just have more of them.
In days-gone-by equipment would be packed into a truck until it was full and then the next rolled up to the door. For the last 30 years transporters have become tailor-made affairs, designed down to the last centimetre to take the cars, with the surfaces where the wheels rest also used as worktops. On each side are cabinets packed with spare parts and consumables. Such is the need for space that some trucks have special "belly lockers" underneath the transporter.
Loading and packing a truck has become a science for a very good reason. This is the responsibility of the Truckie. If a special part is needed in the middle of qualifying it is no good someone having to hunt around in a trailer for an hour. Every part has to be within easy reach in case the worst happens, and it is normally the Truckie whose job is to make sure it is not only there but also to know where exactly it is stored.
The amount of preparation that goes into a season of travelling is staggering and the operation of packing and travelling is only the beginning. Once the race car transporters arrive they have to park up into their designated parking area behind the garage. Then the unloading operation can begin.
And all of this happens before the cars go onto the race track. If you all think that the Truckies just drive nice, big trucks and go sightseeing like tourists when we visit so many countries each year, please think again!
But the view from the paddock can be very pretty at times.
