Friday at the Nürburgring – Jochen Hahn seizes pole for first race

01. July 2016Nürburgring - The TGP Thursday was, for the first time in many years, a free day with no official engagement on the schedule. If you imagined scenes of peace and quiet, you’d be thrown by the throngs in the paddock and the furious activity in the pits and team tents, even if there were no taxi rides for the VIPs and press, and, by consequence, no supplementary one-hour practice session.
That, however, is just what all the teams had hoped for - an opportunity to track-test any number of upgrades they’d done on the trucks in the buildup to the TGP. And so today’s first free practice was used by most as a test session. Tankpool24, for example, was busy making a number of final adjustments to the trucks of Norbert Kiss (HUN) and André Kursim (GER).
As we’ve seen so far this season, championship leaders Adam Lacko (CZE, Buggyra Freightliner) and Jochen Hahn (GER, MAN), were in another orbit. Of course, you only know how fast a racer can really go in qualifying (and the SuperPole). Hahn and Lacko were the opening headline act, if you could call it that, the German’s top lap of 1:55.038s three-tenths quicker than the Czech’s best.
Steffi Halm was third-quickest in her MAN, ahead of compatriot and team boss René Reinert.
But then, in the first flying lap, Frenchman Jérémy Robineau’s MAN came to a dead halt right in the apex in front of the Mercedes Arena, and then a little later the Mercedes of local hero Heinz-Werner Lenz came to a stop, bringing out the yellow flags and a speed restriction.
For most of the racers this was the signal to return to the pits. The yellow flags were soon furled, but the top drivers stayed put, certain of a place in the Top 10. Besides Hahn and Lacko, these included Halm and Reinert, Kiss, MAN pilots Ryan Smith (GBR), Anthony Janiec (FRA), and Sascha Lenz (GER), and the latter’s compatriot Gerd Körber (Iveco). Tenth place was fiercely contested till the close by Ellen Lohr (GER) in her MAN and Austrian Markus Altenstrasser (Iveco). In the event it was Lohr that made it.
The SuperPole, which starts after a gap of only five minutes, took a good 10 minutes longer to get going while the trucks of Robineau and Heinz-Werner Lenz were towed away and the track mopped up.
Lacko plonked himself down atop the timing monitor with a lap of 1:54.842s, two-tenths quicker than Hahn. But the German promptly stomped on it and fairly flew around the Ring in 1:54.548s, leaving the Buggyra pilot helpless to counter.
So it’s pole for Hahn in tomorrow’s first race with Lacko alongside. Halm, Reinert, Kiss, Smith, Janiec, Lenz, Körber, and Lohr occupy the next four rows on the grid.

Impressions: