The insane racing category that went off the rails

Truck racing is very much a motorsport niche these days.

The European Truck Racing Championship flies under the radar of most of the sport's media, while the British series is a 'run what ya brung' type of club championship where the vast majority of vehicles have seen better days and nearly all of the competitors have something to do with trucks, haulage or logistics at a professional level.

There was, however, a time in not too distant history when truck racing was something more than motor racing's oddity. Back then, it was taken very seriously by both manufacturers and professional drivers, who looked at it as a sensible career path.

A new category is born

It was in the mid-90s when truck racing came of age. But even then, the discipline was still very young, given that it had only been around since the early '80s.

In 1985, the first ever European Truck Racing Cup season was held. Initially, the trucks were divided into three classes based on engine capacity. Manufacturers got involved in all three of them and, as a result, privateers could no longer keep up.

The solution was found ahead of the 1994 season, when a new class structure was introduced. The Race Truck class was designed with independent entrants in mind, while the Super Race Truck category became the playground of manufacturers. That point marks the beginning of the most insane era in the history of the discipline.

Super Race Trucks were extreme bits of kit and they utilised bespoke space frames

With fairly liberal rules, a lot of cash was pumped into trucks through developments made by manufacturers including Mercedes-Benz, MAN, DAF and Caterpillar.

"The Super Race Trucks were very much an open formula," recalls David Atkins, whose eponymous team used to run a works Mercedes-Benz truck for motorcycle racing convert Steve Parrish. "The sport was technically going forward very, very quickly."

In the early '90s, roadgoing trucks used drum brakes and diesel engines that were still in a relatively early phase of development. Therefore, Atkins says "truck racing had manufacturers on board because it was a proving ground for tomorrow's technology".

"Truck racing used to develop disc brakes and diesel engines as, in racing, the stress on the engine is about 10 times bigger than in a road truck," explains Stefan Honens, who first got into truck racing in the mid-'90s and to this day is regarded as one of the brightest tech minds of the ETRC.

Super Race Trucks were indeed extreme bits of kit and they also utilised bespoke space frames.

"They were 4.5-tonnes, had sequential gearboxes and twin-turbochargers, up to 12-litre capacity," recalls Honens. "Weight distribution was 50/50. The optimum weight was 48% front and 52% at the back - so they were heavier at the back."

For comparison, today's racing trucks have a minimum weight of 5300kg, but 3150kg has to be on the front axle to prevent moving the engine too far towards the back of the vehicle. The frame must also come from a roadgoing truck, as well as the engine and the gearbox.

The glory years

With truck racing on a rise in the early '90s, it wasn't long until professional drivers started to turn their attention towards the discipline.

"Mercedes-Benz had four or five trucks with different sponsors so it was more or less like the DTM," recalls Antonio Albacete, still an ETRC frontrunner today, who started out in truck racing back in 1997. He had previously been a single-seater racer - reaching British Formula 3000 - and raced in Super Touring before deciding his future lay in trucks.

"I remember the first time I drove a truck at Jarama. I was going up the hill, going 'whooo' . Then I said 'oh fuck' and then I noticed it - I didn't go flat out. So, the next lap I went flat out and I thought 'fucking hell, big power'. You felt the acceleration more than in a touring car."

Albacete and Parrish weren't the only high-profile names involved. Truck racing grids of the day also included drivers such as Slim Borgudd (a sometime Formula 1 racer and ABBA's session drummer), Ludovic Faure, Alain Ferte, Jordi Gene, Gerd Korber, Fritz Kreutzpointner (the former Mercedes-Benz junior who had teamed up with Michael Schumacher at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1991), Harri Luostarinen and Markus Oestreich.

During those years, the championship seemed to flourish.

Truck racing quickly became a story motorsport knows all too well

"It was quite overwhelming, because we had so many spectators and so many trucks," recalls Rolf Werner, currently the ETRC's managing director, who arrived in truck racing in the mid-90s, working as a flag marshal during his home round of the championship - the ADAC Truck Grand Prix that is still held at the Nurburgring.

A glance at the exhibition in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (below) is enough to get the idea of just how important truck racing used to be for the manufacturer. Super Race Trucks have their place there among cars from F1, CART, DTM, Group C and the FIA GT era.

Back in the trucks' heyday, even then McLaren F1 star David Coulthard was invited to drive Team Atkins Mobil 1-branded truck for PR purposes, something that is difficult to imagine the team allowing today.

The manufacturer exodus

Truck racing was as big as ever but the fierce competition between the OEMs diverted development in an unwanted direction.

"Things like monocoque chassis," explains Atkins. "Road trucks were never going to use monocoque chassis and all it became was that the manufacturers, in order to win, were having to produce and develop things that had no reference to the roadgoing vehicles."

It quickly became a story motorsport knows all too well. A rapid rise was followed by shortlived glory days after which came a sudden decline. On the brink of the new millennium, manufacturers started to turn their back on truck racing one by one. DAF pulled out in 1999. MAN and Mercedes-Benz followed in 2001 and Caterpillar the year after.

"At the end of 2001, the teams got together in Germany and wanted to find the way where they could continue going forward but unfortunately nobody could agree on things and the Super Race Trucks was going to finish," says Atkins. "Mercedes didn't have any ambition to be in the Race Truck class at all, so they decided that they would pull out their official involvement in truck racing."

The Super Race Truck class went on beyond the manufacturer exodus but the golden era was over.

"Until 2001, all manufacturers had tents with three floors, etc," explains Andre Bartcher, a photographer who has been around truck racing for nearly three decades. "[After that] it was not the same. Fewer sponsors and guests, less hospitality."

Still, Czech outfits Buggyra and Tatra were the remaining Super Race Truck builders, although Volkswagen joined later, in what was the category's swansong.

If the Super Race Trucks of the '90s were too far technically derived from their roadgoing counterparts, the new breed of racers didn't even resemble them aesthetically. The Buggyra and the VW Titan each utilised cabins from light commercial vehicles that resulted in the racers looking rather artificial, which were not to the liking of truck racing's purists.

The 2005 season was the last of the Super Race Truck category's existence.

"Super Race Trucks already died before that," argues Atkins. "After Mercedes pulled out there was no real manufacturers."

It's difficult to pinpoint the reasons behind the sudden demise of the class and the decline in truck racing as whole. But Parrish offers a possible explanation.

The Super Race Truck era was arguably the most insane in the history of the discipline, but it won't necessarily be remembered as the healthiest

"Certainly with Mercedes-Benz there was always controversy within the board," says the two-time champion from the Super Race Truck era. "Helmut Werner was a big fan of truck racing and he was in charge for most of the time when I was involved but there were always two sides.

"One side of the board loved it because it was great for development, but there was always that element that a truck shouldn't been seen going fast and sideways, smoking from the tyres because they were looking at making trucks safer and slower.

"If you're a company, there's probably a period when you use all the opportunities in marketing and hospitality and [then] you have to have a change. We see that in touring cars, in F1."

Cost escalation and emission standards becoming stricter over the years could also have been contributing factors, as well as, at least in case of Mercedes-Benz, the manufacturers' desire to commit to other motorsport ventures.

"[In the '90s] nobody cared about the environmental situation," says Werner. "Black smoke, which at the moment is the most important point, at that stage didn't play any role."

Although the Super Race Truck era was arguably the most insane in the history of the discipline, it won't necessarily be remembered as the healthiest one.

The ETRC's all-time great, the five-time title-winner Jochen Hahn, who used to race a privately-entered Mercedes-Benz Super Race Truck in the early days of his impressive career, admits that he's not a fan of the concept now. In fact, he reckons that racing vehicles being closer to their roadgoing counterparts is better for the modern championship in the longer scheme of things.

"Super Race Truck were a lot more expensive," Hahn says. "In the end, I'm happy to stay with Race Trucks. It was not our [privateers'] level."