Shane Brereton stamped his authority on the GRAMMER TRUCK CUP last weekend....
British racer Shane Brereton dominated the GRAMMER TRUCK CUP during round three of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at Nürburgring last weekend.
Following two extremely competitive weekends (four different winners at Misano and three different victors at the Hungaroring), the famous ADAC Truck Grand Prix was a one-man show. The TOR Truck Racing driver took four wins in as many races and moved himself to the top of the standings.
Yet, despite a clean sweep of wins, Brereton believes that there’s still room for improvement performance wise.
“It looks good [the result], but have struggled for pace,” he said. 
“We lost the balance in the truck but it has got a lot better through the weekend. If I get my general pace up, I’ll get better results because I do really well on the first lap and then, because I lack a little bit of lap time, I lose a couple of places. I’m good in the traffic, but need more speed.”
Over the course of the weekend Frenchman Thomas Robineau and local ace Steffen Faas, who grew up watching the ADAC Truck Grand Prix as a fan, were Brereton’s closest rivals.
Robineau, who’s a race-by-race entrant this season was the best of the rest, having finished second in races one and three aboard his family team-entered Team Robineau MAN truck.
Steffen Faas proved to be a formidable competitor on home soil by scoring three podium finishes.
His weekend, however, was marred by a tough Race 4 where he was excluded for overspeeding on several different occasions.
“ I was very happy because of that and I felt the truck very well,” said the Tankpool24 Racing Mercedes-Benz driver.
“On Sunday, in the warm-up, I set my best lap time here. Unfortunately, later I couldn’t do this lap time again - in qualifying it was so much traffic in front of me.
“The races were very good and we had three podiums this weekend. I’m very happy about this, just the last race was no good for me.
“I had a problem with overspeeding and couldn’t control this,” admitted Faas.
“Now we must look forward to the future, we have five more racing weekends to go.”
The youngest ever FIA ETRC competitor, 17-year old Teo Calvet, made history by finishing third in Race 2.
“It’s so good to be on the podium on what is my first ever weekend in the European Championship and at the Nürburgring, it’s amazing,” said the delighted teenager.
Terry Gibbon and the T-Sport driver experienced a cracked cylinder head on their MAN challenger on Friday and his team made a herculean efforts to be ready for the competition the day after.
“It was a hard weekend with an engine failure, one of the cylinder heads broke,” admitted Gibbon
“We had spare parts in stock back in the workshop in England. Some of the team members flew over from England to Germany with the new parts.
“The team was fantastic and to top it off with a podium is a nice finish to the weekend,” explained Gibbon, who came third in Race 4.
Going into Slovakia Ring, Brereton tops the standings with 125 points to his name, 24 clear of Faas. Robineau is on 77, while Jamie Anderson and Ray Coleman have 68 and 65 to their names respectively.
Both Anderson and Coleman we’re forced to miss the action at the ‘Ring last weekend.
Oly Janes picked up a podium position with a fine second place in his Buggyra International Racing System Freightliner in race 4. It was a good end to an often frustrating weekend for the British driver.
Getting points but unable to just manage a podium visit was Luis Recuenco who took fourth position in race two. The Spanish Trucksport Lutz Bernau driver then had a dramatic accident on race three when he collected Oly Janes at turn two meaning his team had to perform a swift repair for the final race which Recuenco took seventh place in class.
Frankie Vojtisek returned to the FIA ETRC after his team completed a remarkable effort to rebuild his MAN after that spectacular fire. A fourth position in race 1 was his highlight from the weekend which ended sadly after he was unable to start the final race of the weekend.
Eduardo Rodrigues claimed points in all four races in his Reboconort run MAN, while Erwin Kleinnagelvoort (EK Truck Race) had an action-packed weekend which saw him also score in each race.
The Dutchman also had two significant battles with Kleinnagelvoort and an off track excursion when he was in collision with Calvet in race 3.
For the GRAMMER TRUCK CUP standings click HERE