Saturday in Spielberg Part 3 – 40/40 for Norbert Kiss

16. May 2015Spielberg - The weather held up better than expected. At the end of the day the mood in the Oxxo and Schwabentruck teams was jubilant; René Reinert and tankpool24, on the other hand, were anything but.
Polesitter Smith got away quite cleanly at the start. Reinert, who was to the Englishman’s left, managed to top the hillock at the end of the pit straight a nose ahead and was going the long way round the right-hand bend when he was smacked in the side by Smith’s MAN, which had drifted wide. Both trucks lost a bit of pace. Reinert could do nothing but watch Körber and Hahn go through; Smith dropped back to eighth, but still ended up the more fortunate of the two. Only a lap later Reinert was forced to give up, his MAN no longer steering as it should.
Without the buffer of Reinert, the leading twosome had Kiss suddenly snapping at their heels, the Hungarian having managed to subdue both the Buggyras and Albacete in short order. Then there was another breakdown — to the chagrin of the many Mercedes fans, Rehfeld pulled off with engine damage. His teammate Kursim had struggled with problems of his own, a recalcitrant exhaust muffler prematurely ending his race after only five laps.
At the front, first Hahn and then Kiss had dispatched Iveco pilot Körber and were hurtling ahead to the flag. It looked to almost everyone like they would finish in this order. But then, some two-thirds into the race, on the approach to the curve that completes the ETRC loop, Hahn’s MAN began to stutter. Kiss was quick to capitalise on the German’s discomfiture, drawing alongside and keeping position despite being on the outside of the curve. He then used his advantage on the inside line into the next curve to move ahead. The first two places thus decided, the attention shifted to the spirited four-way battle for third. Körber’s pursuers Vršecký, Lacko, and Albacete were all nominally quicker, but the thrice-European-champ from Rheinau drew from every last reserve of his 25 years of accumulated experience in truck racing to defend his position, crossing the finish a hair’s-breadth 26 thousandths ahead of Vršecký, followed a second later by Lacko and Albacete.
The battle for the remaining top 10 places was fought between another quartet right till the flag, Smith salvaging seventh ahead of Lohr, Janiec, and Altenstrasser.
Team Oxxo-Lion (Kiss / Janiec) was the top team on the podium, Buggyra (Vršecký / Lacko) and Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert) second and third.
Kiss now leads the championship with 105 points, ahead of Hahn (78), Lacko (70), Vršecký (62), Albacete (56), and Reinert (39).

Impressions: