Hungaroring This And That
24. June 2018Everything seems to point to quadruple champion Jochen Hahn taking his fifth, even if he drew a blank in the fourth race of last weekend’s second round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Hungaroring near Budapest.
On the other hand the going has been quite rough for the man we all expected to be the German Iveco pilot’s strongest competitor, Czech defending champ Adam Lacko. The Buggyra driver lies 4th in the overall standings, 37 points down on Hahn. But don’t forget it’s possible for a driver to win 60 points on a weekend – both Hahn and Lacko have demonstrated that, – and there are six of them still to go.
As highly anticipated, and hotly discussed the duel between the Czech reigning champ and his German predecessor might have been, you can’t ignore the other zealous points-collectors in the frame. Hahn’s teammate and brand companion Steffi Halm and twice-champ Norbert Kiss (Mercedes) from Hungary – in second, level on 64 points – haven’t had it all going for them either. To this day the tankpool24 Racing team continues to rue the 12 points that Kiss was retrospectively stripped of after Race 1 in Misano, when his truck was weighed post-race with bone-dry water tanks and consequently ruled underweight. The interruption and restart of that memorable race resulted in three laps more being driven without the trucks being allowed any service attention in the interval. Had the regulation distance been held to, Kiss would have needed lots less water to cool his brakes and he’d now be only 19 points, or even less, behind Hahn in the standings.
The German famously remarked before the season that because of the parity in performance between so many trucks and drivers this year, the eventual champion wouldn’t necessarily be the one who had the most wins but the one who was the most consistent and had the least DNFs through the season.
After that very wet setting-up Thursday, the forecasts for the race days were varied, and the teams had to be ready for anything. Fresh in everyone’s minds was the extreme weather swings at the Hungaroring during the DTM touring car races a fortnight earlier. As it turned out, however, the truck racers had little to complain about. Indeed, by Sunday afternoon they’d actually had a little too much of a good thing, with the asphalt on the pit straight softening at close to 60°C.
In 2015, when truck racing returned to the Hungaroring after two decades and a half, the Hungarian Truck Fest HTF was in the main a Norbert Kiss festival. A Hungarian racer with a Hungarian team, on his way to defending his title – the fans’ exuberance knew no bounds and Kiss was celebrated like a rock star. On the grid you had folks with PA microphones and megaphones using all the hype they could to stoke the excitement in the grandstand. The mood has mellowed somewhat – the HTF is now a family-focused event with motorsport up close and personal – “Norbi”, of course, and all the other drivers accessible to the fans like at no other racing event.
Impressions:
