Saturday in Spielberg Part 1 – Hahn takes the first pole of 2017

13. May 2017Spielberg - There have been two changes the drivers and teams will have to get used to in this season of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship – both free practice sessions have been lengthened by 10 minutes each to half an hour, while qualifying has been curtailed by half, from 20 minutes to 10. But the turn of events at the very start of the season at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, set off by the heavy rains yesterday afternoon has demanded an unprecedented display of flexibility by all participants – organisers, race control, and truck racers alike.
As we reported yesterday, second free practice was cancelled and rescheduled for today, in two segments of 15 minutes each with an hour’s break in between. In the first, the track surface still offering far less than prime grip, the trucks were nevertheless lapping up to 20 seconds quicker than they’d gone yesterday evening. British race-by-race pilot Ryan Smith drove the fastest lap, followed by the two Germans Sascha Lenz and Steffi Halm (all MAN). The times were close, the 10th-placed driver a little over a second off Smith’s pace. At the bottom of the field of 15 was twice-champ Norbert Kiss (HUN) in a tankpool24 Mercedes, a full four seconds slower.
Had some of the top pilots encountered genuine difficulties, or was everyone playing wait-and-see? Hard to tell.
In the second segment likewise, neither the final timings nor, indeed, the course of proceedings, were anything the spectators expected. It had begun to rain again, and the trucks initially lapped a good four seconds slower than they’d gone just an hour earlier. But then the top times suddenly dropped precipitously, and the names against those times weren’t those you’d have imagined. At the end it was Kiss, who’d sat at the bottom of the heap till just a couple of minutes before, and Lenz – equal on pace give or take a thousandth – atop the leaderboard, followed closely by defending champion Jochen Hahn (GER) and Smith.
The sun decided to look in again right at the start of first qualifying. Now there was no more holding back – the time for that was over. Steffi Halm surprised everyone by plunging into the SuperPole with the quickest lap of 1:05.200s pretty early on, ahead of compatriots Hahn and Lenz. MAN pilot Antonio Albacete (ESP) was fourth-quickest, followed by Kiss, Smith, Czech Adam Lacko (Buggyra Freightliner), Iveco pilot Gerd Körber (GER), Portuguese José Rodrigues (MAN), and home hero Markus Altenstrasser in an Iveco. The times were all extremely close – just one second separated Altenstrasser from Halm.
Five minutes later everyone had to be on the absolute limit, and be it that last season’s top dogs had continued to hold back in qualifying, you could be certain they weren’t now. Hahn promptly heaved himself up into pole, his 1:04.956s being the only lap under the 1:05 mark, a little over a tenth quicker than Halm. It was far closer down the next three rows of the grid – Lenz, Smith, Albacete, Körber, Kiss, and Lacko were less than four-hundredths apart.
Altenstrasser and José Rodrigues were ninth and 10th.

Impressions: