Tuesday, 19.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
Sunday in Spielberg Part 3 – Hahn takes his second win

Sunday in Spielberg Part 3 – Hahn takes his second win

14. May 2017Spielberg - The final race of the weekend, with 18,000 spectators in attendance, was memorable for the number of retirements. To begin with, Altenstrasser had been forced by mechanical problems in the earlier race to pack it in, and Team Schwabentruck just wasn’t able to get his Iveco ready for Race 4.
Meanwhile, the beating Ryan Smith’s MAN had taken from its dust-up with Draganovic’s Freightliner was so severe that it was going to take much TLC to get it back in shape to race.
The Britisher’s forced withdrawal had a decisive impact on the actual proceedings, because Smith was to have started from pole.
This starting slot was accordingly left vacant and the job of setting the pace now fell to André Kursim. The Mercedes pilot was on the outer column, with Lenz, starting from third, on the advantageous inside line. Smith’s absence meant the German MAN pilot had a potentially clear run to the first corner.
And so it was: Lenz was up ahead of Kursim before the end of the pit straight, and by the penultimate curve that completes the truck race loop the MAN was clear in the lead.
At the same time Lacko had become a bugbear for Kursim, clinging tenaciously onto the German youngster’s rear crash guard.
In the exact spot where the two major collisions in the previous race had taken place there was suddenly another cloud of dust. Kursim’s tankpool24 teammate Kiss’s Mercedes presently emerged, bobbing along over the grass. A broken spring leaf – and not the result of any enemy contact – had pitched him into the gravel. His was the third casualty.
His retirement had no bearing on the situation at the front, where Kursim and Lacko were locked in a high-speed duel for the prize position of pursuer-in-chief. In the sweeping right-hand curve that leads onto the pit straight the Mercedes pilot strayed momentarily from the raceline, allowing the ever-watchful Lacko to pull clean ahead in his Freightliner.
Now Kursim had Race 3 winner Steffi Halm on his tail. On the very next lap she had swept ahead into third, the Reinert Racing MAN evidently a couple of ticks quicker than the Mercedes. But shortly after that, on the approach to the penultimate curve, the MAN in blue slowed rapidly and rolled straight ahead onto the Grand Prix extension of the circuit – a broken spring, retirement #4.
Kursim was third again, but had no space to breathe as he was set upon almost immediately by yesterday’s surprise winner José Rodrigues. Exactly at the apex of the penultimate curve the Reboconort MAN and the tankpool24 Mercedes collided, left the track, and ploughed through the gravel trap together. But while the Portuguese was able to extricate himself and continue on his way, the Mercedes stuck unmovable with a jammed gearbox.
But even the MAN was so badly damaged that it was the best Rodrigues could do to get it back to the pits. Retirements #5 and #6 – those were it, no more.
Jochen Hahn now had nothing – and no-one – between him and the leading pair, Lenz and Lacko.
Lenz had held onto his lead for 14 laps despite the Czech’s attacks, which had only grown in fury. But as is so often true in real life, when two people are busy quarrelling, a third person can take advantage – in this case, defending champ Hahn. Lacko, in an all-out effort to put his Freightliner ahead of Lenz’s MAN, left a wee gap open that the wily Hahn pounced into in an instant to leapfrog both Lacko and Lenz into the lead. This is also the order in which the top three crossed the line. Albacete and Körber finished fourth and fifth. Draganovic was sixth, ahead of Britisher Terry Gibbon (MAN), Scania pilot Erwin Kleinnagelvoort (NLD), and José Rodrigues’s paí Eduardo (MAN).
Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus (Hahn / Körber) was the top-scoring team, followed by Buggyra Racing 1969 (Lacko / Draganovic) and Reinert Adventure (Halm / Lenz).
The Promoter’s Cup podium had Draganovic on the top step, Gibbon second, and Kleinnagelvoort third.
Jochen Hahn leads the championship with 51 points going into the second round in Misano in a couple of weeks, followed by Halm (40), Lacko (34), Körber (26), Lenz (25), and José Rodrigues and Albacete (both 24).

Impressions:

Sunday in Spielberg Part 3 – Hahn takes his second win
Sunday in Spielberg Part 3 – Hahn takes his second win
Sunday in Spielberg Part 3 – Hahn takes his second win