Saturday at the Nürburgring Part 2 – Steffi Halm leads Schwabentruck one-two
30. June 2018Nürburgring - The day’s second race started with Körber in the lead, his Iveco junior colleague and compatriot, #2 starter Kursim, falling into the toils of his immediate pursuers. He was handed down by Steffi Halm and Lacko on the first lap itself, and then a few laps later by Kiss and Hahn.
There was a change at the front too, Halm taking over the lead from Körber. The two proceeded to take a joyfully celebrated one-two for Schwabentruck, while a battle for 3rd raged right behind them.
Lacko had Kiss and Hahn literally breathing down his neck, the Mercedes and the Iveco almost up at his Buggyra Freightliner’s rear crash guard lap after lap. The two appeared quicker than the Buggyra, but catching up and overtaking are wholly different things – especially if the man you want to overtake is a defending champion and his name is Lacko.
Kiss did the job of attack dog, while Hahn lurked all the while in his draft. Suddenly, four laps to the flag, the quad-champ seemed to lose his patience. Exiting the Mercedes Arena he prepared to make his move on Kiss, with the evident intention of carrying it through on the entry to the truncation of the circuit’s short loop. But the Hungarian shifted his line, forcing Hahn to drift wide as he evaded. Caught on the wrong foot, the German missed his braking point and had to keep going straight on in the direction of the Müllenbachschleife. The Iveco pilot lost a huge 20 seconds getting back on track, a delay that dumped him out of the points.
Kiss meanwhile could see no way past Lacko and had to content himself with a thankless 4th place behind the Czech.
Albacete crossed the line in 5th, followed by Lenz, Reinert, Kursim, MAN pilot Ryan Smith (GBR), and Rodrigues.
Early on it had begun to rain penalties, and as the race proceeded what had started as a trickle turned into a flood. A number of drivers were given 10 or 20 seconds for overspeeding – the list included Hahn, Rodrigues, Albacete, Smith, Lenz, and Reinert, the two lattermost for repeat infringements. The churn in the classification made no difference to Hahn; he was out of the points anyway. But it did shuffle the order behind 4th-placed Kiss. Fifth now was Kursim, followed by Albacete, French race-by-race pilot Anthony Janiec (MAN), Smith, Lenz, and Rodrigues. Reinert too failed to score.
Hahn now has 110 points in total, a clear lead over Kiss (83), Halm (82), Lacko (76), Albacete (64), Lenz (58), Reinert, and Kursim (both 47).
For the second time today „Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ was the top team, ahead of Buggyra Racing 1969 (Lacko / Janes) and tankpool24 (Kiss / Faas).
Brereton took top honours in the Grammer Cup, ahead of German tankpool24 driver Steffen Faas (Mercedes) and Téo Calvet. The young French MAN pilot, only 17 years old, was the darling of the track commentators during the races and the practice sessions yesterday. On Thursday the son of Fabien Calvet, president of the French truck racing commission, wrote the last of his school-leaving examinations, and was brought to the circuit overnight. He drove his first practice laps – his first exposure to the Nürburgring withal, only yesterday morning.
Impressions:
