Saturday at the Hungaroring Part 3 - Steffi beats the boys by a mile

27. August 2016Hungaroring - It was an outcome nobody could have expected, and the protagonist finished empty-handed.
Frankie Vojtisek had pole by virtue of his eighth-place finish in the first race. The 30-year truck race veteran had no difficulty holding his lead into the first corner. Further down the field, things weren’t going so smoothly. The MAN race trucks of Germans Ellen Lohr and Sascha Lenz came together heavily, and when they’d sorted things out there were exit wounds. While Lohr took up the chase again, it was the best Lenz could do to get his badly damaged truck to drag itself a few hundred metres along till it could go no further and he had to abandon it trackside.
Out in front Vojtisek led going into the second lap, but Halm behind him soon found a gap that she pounced into and overtook.
Thereafter there were two separate races, one a solo by Steffi, who finished with a 17 second advantage, and the other the pursuit of Vojtisek by the rest of the field.
So, while Halm was streaking away to a solitary victory, behind her there were multiple attempts to dislodge Vojtisek from second place. Most of those were by racers in nominally quicker trucks, but none of them is anywhere close to the Czech when it comes to experience.
Corner after corner, and the Hungaroring has many of them, it looked like one driver or another could just get past him. But Vojtisek blocked every attempt.
When on the last lap but two Hahn and Kiss got in each other’s way, the Czech finally got a breather, or thought he might have.
But the race was far from finished yet. The chasing duo had, by and by, been caught up by Janiec, Lacko, Smith, and finally Forman and Kursim, who earlier had fallen back somewhat.
At the approach to the flag the spread between these seven was an extremely tight three seconds.
When this pack swept into the penultimate corner with Vojtisek still in the lead, tailed by Kiss and Janiec and then the rest, that’s the order we all were quite certain they would finish in.
What then ensued in the exit of the final bend is a matter of divergent opinions, depending on which of those involved you ask.
Kiss appeared to have nosed into Vojtisek, swivelling his MAN into the pit wall. Kiss, apparently caught off guard himself, inadvertently slowed allowing Janiec a split-second opportunity to surge ahead and cross the line in second place with a margin of not quite one-tenth.
Lacko was fourth, head of Smith, Hahn, Forman, Kursim, Brereton, and Dutch Scania pilot Erwin Kleinnagelvoort, who collected the final point.
The protagonist of this race was classified in 12th place a lap down. He had crashed into the wall before the finish line.
Top points in the team ranking went to WOW! Women On Wheels (Lohr / Halm), followed by tankpool24 (Kiss / Kursim) and Buggyra International (Lacko / Forman).

Impressions: