Ever since the FIA created the European Truck Racing Championship three decades ago, the world got mixed in with them with the idea of turning machines made for shipping duties everyday, apart from making problems with traffic nowadays despite truck bans, into racing titans in the world's finest racetracks across Europe, including the Nurburgring and Circuit de la Sarthe. Those trucks made for racing purposes weigh 12,000 lbs, equipped with special equipment, thousand horsepower of power output, ten thousand pounds-foot of torque, and there goes a recipe for creating a very unique race so unique, the producers wanted a slice of it in the game.
The Tankpool24 Racing Team, formerly called the MB Motorsports truck racing team, started their racing career at the 1995-1996 International touring car racing and began their truck racing journey in 1997 with drivers including truck racing legend Markus Oestreich, Ellen Lohr, Jordi Gene and Steffi Halm. The team was under the supervision of Markus Bauer, who manages a group of volunteers from the service area of Mercedes-Benz and has also recruited Team Hahn's top engineer, Stefan Honens.
Piloted by Andre Kursim and Roland Rehfeld, this Racing Truck, based on the Mercedes Actros MP4 semi-truck, fought for nine rounds in the 2015 FIA Euro Truck Racing Championship season. Despite last year's poor result, Kursim continues on the 2016 season alongside last year's champion, Norbert Kiss, who made a switch to this team during a pre-season announcement.
Driving a racing truck is different than driving a racecar, apart from its titanic weight it delivers, because driving one of these is like piloting a B1 or a B2 bomber in the skies above. Yes, that was a bit of a compliment but having to learn about the truck's complex machinery, and its 10-speed gearbox specially designed for ETRC use, it should be a piece of cake trying to handle a truck just like handling a sportscar on the bends. It takes guts and determination to master this heavyweight monster but if you're getting used to it, Oh yeah and while you're enjoying it, it's recommend to play with it on Cockpit View or Chase View because that bulk of the machine really blocks your view and you really can't see where you're going on its third person perspective.
Having satisfied with a big lorry with power output beyond Veyron levels, I decided to do some experiment round the Nurburgring Grand Prix Circuit to see how track-worthy this Racing Truck this and to do that, I need a little control for this experiment and I think I found one...
This old Lotus Elise should do it and what I'm going to do is to do a little David and Goliath test to prove if the giant truck can go round the track as fast as this lightweight mosquito.
And now the results...
2:29.506 - Elise
2:33.631 - Truck
It's a shock result. The truck made it round the track four seconds slower than the lightweight car. Man, this truck sure knows how to catch up despite being a whopper of a size. It's a clear say that with so many oddballs going on around in the FM6 car roster such as Fast Five's Gurkha, the Cadillac XTS Limo, and this, looks like the weirdness keeps on going for the producers to think of. Wonder what else they'll put up next in the future of Forza?
Still, this diesel titan gave us a whole new level of enjoyment in FM6 and having satisfied with how the Racing Truck performs, it feels like a Perfect Day To Burn Some Diesel. Keep On Trucking, folks. Who knows what surprises we might get there with this hunk of metal.
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