Saturday in Zolder – part 2
22. September 2012Zolder - In the first race of the weekend everything went well for Jochen Hahn. He defended his pole position at the start with Albacete right behind him (his biggest and only real rival in the fight over the Championship). With one more point Hahn had the lead in the Championship. After the race he had 21 points.
During the first lap a part of the steering on Albacete’s MAN broke and that meant that the Spaniard had to quit. Hahn was able to easily win with a start-finish victory. Lacko and Vrsecky won the two remaining places on the podium with a respectful distance between each other. The other places were also soon determined: Kiss placed 4th, followed by Oestreich, Lacheze, Reinert and Bösiger. Lap after lap the Swiss driver fought his way from the 19th position first into the top ten and eventually placed 8th. Thus Bösiger won the pole position for the second race and this was worth it, as it can be seen later. Mäkinen and Janiec won the last two places on the podium.
In the second race, Bösiger made use of his pole position and took the lead right from the beginning only to clinch a start-finish victory in the end. Behind the Swiss driver there was a lot of action taking place. Already at the starting line, Reinert and Kiss had clashed. Reinert as well as Lacheze, who was actually not involved, ended up in the gravel. They were able to make it out of there themselves but the race was over for them nevertheless. For a long time both MKR-Renaults from Oestreich and Lacko were on the places 2 and 3 and it looked like as if there would only be MKR drivers standing on the podium. However, Hahn could not accept this and he had a tough fight with Lacko over the 3rd place. In the end he had the edge over Lacko. Behind the Czech driver Kiss placed 5th, who constantly had to defend his position against Albacete. Due to his failure in the first race, the Spaniard had to start into the race from the back of the group of 21 drivers and finally fought his way up and placed 6th. The top ten of the point collectors was completed by Vrsecky, Mäkinen, the Belgian Jean-Pierre Blaise (Renault) and the MAN driver Frankie Vojtisek (CZE).
Then the race commission took a closer look at the video sequence that taped the tussle at the start of the race and eventually they gave Kiss a 30 second penalty. The Hungarian fell back on place 11 and was therefore thrown out of the top ten. Everyone that had placed behind Kiss moved one place up. The MAN driver Jeremy Robineau placed 10th. In the overall rating Hahn is leading again with 406 points. Albacete has 383 points, followed by Lacko (254), Oestreich (252), Vrsecky (241) and Bösiger (204).
Impressions:
