Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 1 – Hahn slays it in the Super Pole with record lap

01. July 2018Nürburgring - The sky was a clear blue at the start of this second race day of the Truck Grand Prix, the 3rd round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, at the Nürburgring. Warm-up began at the early hour of 8 am, but the racers were all wide awake and ready to roll – quad-champ Jochen Hahn (GER) went under 1:55 on the out.
Second qualifying, which followed, will remain in many memories as one of the closest and most touch-and-go for many of the Titans who needed to squeeze into the Top 10. At the end Anthony Janiec, only six tenths slower in his MAN than the quickest driver, ended up 11th fastest.
After another very slow entry lap Steffi Halm (GER) set a 1:54.795 in her Iveco. Countryman René Reinert (MAN) countered immediately with 1:54.503. Hahn, with a time in the 1:55s, found himself sliding down the order and, in 10th, was in the exclusion zone. Contrary to his usual wont, he stayed out to do another quick lap. Some of the other top drivers chose instead to conserve their tyres and drove directly back into pit lane, there to await the start of the Super Pole. Many of those would have had their hearts sink into their racing boots – that’s how tight it was.
Hahn registered the second-best time after Reinert, followed by MAN pilot Ryan Smith (GBR), Steffi Halm, the two MAN pilots Sascha Lenz (GER) and José Rodrigues (POR), Czech defending champ Adam Lacko (Buggyra Freightliner), André Kursim (GER), and Antonio Albacete (ESP) – both MAN, – and Mercedes pilot Norbert Kiss (HUN) down in 10th.
Albacete had won pole yesterday; Kiss is usually right up in front. Now both were almost bowled out, as it were, of the Top 10. Gerd Körber (Iveco), who had finished Race 2 yesterday on the podium, was no more than seven tenths slower than top qualifier Reinert, but now that sufficed for only 12th place on the grid.
In the Super Pole Hahn went straight under 1:54, his 1:53.788 the quickest lap of the weekend. Not satisfied with that, the bantam from Altensteig stepped on it once more, setting the circuit afire with a 1:53.331, an absolute record for a race truck on the Nürburgring. He also won pole, by the way. Albacete and Kiss, the two pilots who – only minutes earlier – had scarcely hung in there, also turned in times in the 1:53s to snap up 2nd and 3rd place. Reinert presently joined them as the fourth in the rarefied new 1:53 club.
Places 5 through 10 were taken by Lacko, Halm, Lenz, Kursim, J. Rodrigues, and Smith, all in 1:54+.

Impressions: