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Spielberg This And That

Spielberg This And That

06. May 2016In the run-up to the season-opening round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship the one thing everybody was talking about was whether – and how well – Hungarian title defender Norbert Kiss would come to terms with his new truck, the tankpool24 Mercedes. But when the circus arrived in Spielberg, Austria, the talk was only about the weather. Nobody had imagined they’d behold the Red Bull Ring slathered over in snow six weeks after the advent of spring. But the snow was soon gone, just as quickly as it had arrived.
On Friday, when the action on the track began, the sun was shining brightly from a cloudless sky. Now, once again, racing would be at the forefront.
The Mercedes race truck, it turned out, wasn’t the final 2016 version. Several components were missing, or had arrived too late, and so compromises were made. Not only that, even though only one of the two MB Motorsport trucks was race-ready, the second tankpool24 pilot André Kursim still came along to provide moral support, for what that was worth, to his new teammate.
In free training on Friday Kiss was way down the field. On both race days, however, he came on strongly in the SuperPole. In Saturday’s second race, which he started on pole, a heavy collision in the first corner and a second mishap a little later put him out of contention. Nevertheless he managed to collect 14 championship points for two sixth-place finishes and one eighth place - two more than the team won in the entire 2015 season.
But there were more surprises and top performances on the track. Not only were the weather conditions contradictory – radiant sunshine on Saturday and torrential rain throughout Sunday; – the results too were anything but what you might have expected.
While the two German MAN drivers Jochen Hahn and René Reinert dominated the races on Saturday, the Czech Adam Lacko was even more dominant in his Buggyra on Sunday. Even his compatriot and teammate Jiří Forman wasn’t half as affected by the wet asphalt as their competitors.
Hahn and Lacko were the odds-on favourites before the season began, but at the end of Saturday’s racing the Czech trailed not only Hahn in the points but also Reinert, home hero Markus Altenstrasser (Iveco), and even young MAN pilot Sascha Lenz (GER).
Despite the fact that he’d had no evident problems during the race.
Then suddenly overnight Buggyra seemed to have found the philosopher’s stone, hitting on a setup that was perfect for the extremely slippery conditions on Sunday. Lacko went on to win both races convincingly, lapping the Ring as on rails while the competition slipped and slid all over as if on ice.
Something exciting always happens at the first corner, especially at the Red Bull Ring. But owing to the extraordinary and dangerous conditions – the newly resurfaced track was being raced on for the first time and there were absolutely no points of reference, – race control had the trucks take two formation laps and then two laps under yellow flags, overtaking forbidden.
During just these four laps the field was so widely spread apart that what became of the race was a procession in single file. For the racers it was a struggle just to stay on the track. With plenty of time to observe the trucks in front of them, a few of the more adventurous ones attempted overtaking manoeuvres only when it seemed least dangerous. Lacko alone was in another orbit, overtaking at will, often from way off the raceline.
Two other drivers, not quite famed as rainmen, proved revelations in these unreal conditions. In the final race, Dutch Scania pilot Erwin Kleinnagelvoort coolly overtook such stalwarts as Ellen Lohr (MAN), Reinert, and Altenstrasser in trucks much more powerful than his own. That’s after Frenchman Anthony Janiec stormed to second behind Lacko in the first race, a result France’s largest sports publication L’Équipe took as an opportunity to run a two-page report on the MAN pilot and the sport in general.

Impressions:

Spielberg This And That
Spielberg This And That
Spielberg This And That