It was a very cold start to the day in Monza, but warmed up at 1100 hours. Some trucks had arrived yesterday and were already washed and parked outside their garages. The rest of the teams arrived yesterday evening and today.. The truck wash area in Monza is big, so we do not have teams waiting to use the water taps.This can be very annoying when you have so much other work to do. A peculiar feature here, is that the taps are not above ground. The teams have to lift up metal covers in the tarmac to be able to connect their hosepipes. Walking around the paddock today, I find out that 2 teams had punctures on the trip to Monza and both were on the trailer tyres. Luckily, no damage was done to the trailers. This means that the punctures happened at slow speed otherwise the tyre would have started falling apart and hitting the bodywork as the driver tries to slow down .The race trailers can sustain very expensive damage to the area around the wheels when a puncture happens. The cost to replace the tyre and repair and repaint the trailer bodywork can run into several thousand euros. One unlucky team suffered a blown turbo on the truck engine, but thanks to some very quick repairs, they were able to arrive here with the car and equipment. Teams do not want to be spending so much money just getting to the circuit, especially when they are on a tight budget. Also, having your truck parked up in a busy paddock on the race weekend, with loads of damage, is just not a good advertisement.
It was good to see new teams, new paintwork, new graphics and even some new trucks in the paddock. I have done some "rough" calculations and the total amount of kilometres travelled to Monza by all the race trucks, the tyre support and fuel supply vehicles amounts to approximately 27700 kilometres. And they will do the same amount getting back home.
And I have not included the hospitality trucks or the trucks who carry all of the advertising banners which are positioned around the circuit.
Trying to make race cars environmentally friendly and "green" seems to be a minor problem when you compare it the cost of getting them and everything else to the race track!!!!
I have also updated the truck requirements for Spain and Germany in my previous post "Its the law", for those who are interested.
I have been talking to most of the truckies today, and with their support, I hope I can keep you informed and interested. Now that the season is getting underway, I will be doing some technical articles about race track facilities that affect them and also some detailed information on the various jobs they do. So bookmark my blog and keep reading it.
Tomorrow, there is a test day for those teams who need it and official testing starts on Saturday.Don't forget to tune in to Eurosport television to watch all the WTCC races live.ENJOY
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| paddock view |
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| Paddock view |
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| Messing around on the top of a truck |
