Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 3 - ...and now Lacko wins when it’s dry!

03. July 2016Nürburgring - Lacko doesn’t win only when it’s raining; he showed he can also do it on a dry track, and how. But it wasn’t easy.
His teammate Forman had, with his 8th-place finish in the first race, secured pole for the concluding heat of the Truck Grand Prix. But the young Czech couldn’t do much with this advantage. Before the Mercedes Arena he’d already been passed by a few. The race leader now was Janiec, followed by Reinert and Lacko, the winner of the first race having shot up unhindered from 8th place.
The Czech’s sole championship rival Hahn, on the other hand, stayed put in 6th.
Janiec couldn’t stay in the lead for much more than a lap; for the rest of the race the 123,000 spectators’ attention was focused on the fierce dogfight between Reinert and Lacko at the front.
Hahn was gaining on the frontrunners lap after lap, and he even ran in third for a while, but just not close enough to dive the fray ahead of him.
Their constant battle was slowing down the leaders, particularly as Lacko’s assault wasn’t only psychological but ballistic in equal measure - and that was clear from the appearance of both trucks as the race wore on.
Hahn kept creeping closer, and when three laps before the finish Reinert went wide and then sliding off onto the gravel, the thrice European champ was right behind him.
Lacko now had to defend his hard-won lead from a harrying Hahn. But even as his many thousands of fans roared him on, Hahn throttled back a bit on the final lap, allowing Lacko a two-second advantage at the flag.
Steffi Halm came home in third. Lap after punishing lap she’d had the defending champ breathing down her neck, never a pleasant place to be. On several occasions it looked like the silver tankpool24 Mercedes would actually leapfrog past the blue Reinert Racing MAN, but Steffi was having none of that, holding on to her precious position by half a second at the finish.
Reinert’s excursion off-track had dropped him down to 5th, and he hung in there till the finish.
The most unyielding battle was that for places six through eight. Janiec had fallen back to 6th, and was promptly pounced on by Körber and Smith. Now a three-way tangle was upon us, between drivers who just don’t know what it means to hold back.
The showdown came two laps before the finish, once again at the end of the upgrade in the Mercedes Arena. The two MANs and an Iveco charged almost alongside into the 90° bend, but Körber in the Iveco was out a nose ahead of Smith and Janiec.
Ninth and 10th, the two final places in the points, were taken by Ellen Lohr and race-by-race pilot Shane Brereton, who thus earned his first points in the FIA ETRC on his very first weekend out.
A short gap behind a forlorn Forman followed.
Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert) was the number one team for the second race in a row, with Buggyra International (Lacko / Forman) second and WOW! Women On Wheels (Lohr / Halm) third.
Even if Jochen Hahn wasn’t able to take over the lead from Adam Lacko, as most of the crowd would fervently have hoped, the bantam from Altensteig was positive about the weekend’s outcome: “We’ve closed the gap by a point to one point!”
Lacko now has 198 points, Hahn 197, Reinert 118, Kiss 98, Janiec 95, and Halm 90.

Impressions: