Saturday in Nogaro Part 2 – Lacko wins first race

20. June 2015Nogaro - As the race trucks got into formation for the first race the thermometer was reading a comfortable 25° - in the shade, of course. In the sun it was distinctly unpleasant, and the asphalt on the pit straight was measured at 54°.
Those who thought that all polesitter Hahn had to do now was to contain Kiss, who was starting diagonally behind him on the next row of the grid, watched with some wonder as Lacko drew alongside the German in the sequence of curves directly after the start and then, entering the back straight, simply surged into the lead. Kiss had by now snatched third from Albacete, but wasn’t close enough to the two leaders to be a threat.
These four quickly pulled out a gap to the rest of the field. For some strange reason the second Buggyra driven by Vršecký just couldn’t keep up. Instead, the Czech was steadily attacked by Reinert, who too was just not able to overtake. About halfway through, the leading quartet had been pared to a duo, Lacko and Hahn. Kiss had dropped back, with Albacete even further behind him. Up in midfield Reinert was continuing his feisty attacks on Vršecký, while Halm was clinging to her teammate - in the hope, presumably, of capitalising in the event that either of the two ahead of her should bump the other off. That, unfortunately, never happened.
Behind Halm, Lohr had her hands full beating back the assault of an unrelenting Anthony Janiec, her teammate of last year. But shortly before the finish, to loud applause from his countrymen, Janiec managed to move ahead of her into eighth.
There was a totally unexpected twist on the penultimate lap. While Hahn mounted another futile attack on Lacko, third-placed Kiss suddenly slowed dramatically. The message over the radio indicated a steering failure. One by one the Hungarian helplessly let his pursuers past till he managed to make it to the flag in seventh, behind Albacete, Vršecký (fourth yet again!), Reinert, and Halm.
While his eighth-place finish entitles Janiec to pole for the second race, the two final points places were taken by Lohr and Smith.
Buggyra (Vršecký / Lacko) was the top-scoring team, ahead of Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert) and Team Bernau-Albacete (Albacete / Lohr).

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