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Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 1 - Hahn takes no-contest pole

Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 1 - Hahn takes no-contest pole

27. August 2016Hungaroring - There was a cloudless sky once again over the Hungaroring on this first race day of the 5th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. The temperature was well above 25°C during qualifying, and the asphalt was measured at over 38°.
The second free practice session, which concluded a little earlier, had been interrupted for about an hour, throwing the schedule off. Englishman Shane Brereton had spun early on in his MAN, on oil that had leaked from his rear axle. It took much longer for that spill to be mopped up than we thought it would.
At the end of the session it was Britisher Ryan Smith atop the timing monitor with a lap of 2:17.620s. The MAN pilot was followed only one-tenth of a second behind by home hero Norbert Kiss in the tankpool24 Mercedes and Jochen Hahn (GER) in his MAN.
In qualifying Kiss was the first to go under 2:18s, then Hahn a little later. Both were back in the pits after their single flying lap, tyre conservation ever an important tactical consideration. Some of the others did likewise, confident that they’d gone fast enough to finish in the top 10 for the SuperPole.
Kiss and Hahn were joined by Smith; Frenchman Anthony Janiec (MAN); Buggyra pilot Adam Lacko (CZE); the three Germans Steffi Halm, Sascha Lenz (both MAN), and Gerd Körber (Iveco); the Czech Jiří Forman (Buggyra Freightliner), and MAN racer Ellen Lohr.
The SuperPole kicked off after a five-minute gap. Unusually, none of the top 10 could better their times from free practice and qualifying. In many cases they were actually quite a bit off.
Kiss in particular seemed to be struggling just to get up to pace. Only at the last moment was he able to lift himself enough to get onto 4th on the grid (he’d been in 10th till then). Halm’s best was only good enough for 5th, ahead of Lacko. The spread between the top six was seven-tenths of a second.
Lohr, Körber, Forman, and Lenz took the places on the fourth and fifth rows of the grid.
All the drivers who qualified behind Steffi Halm moved up a place because of her demotion five places on the grid owing to the penalty she’d picked up in the concluding race at the Nürburgring.

Impressions:

Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 1 - Hahn takes no-contest pole
Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 1 - Hahn takes no-contest pole
Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 1 - Hahn takes no-contest pole