Sunday at the Slovakia Ring Part 3 - Kiss collects his first win of the season

15. July 2018Slovakiaring - The tankpool24 team is in high spirits after Kiss won the last race, Faas took the Grammer Truck Cup honours, and both together topped the team classification.
Faas started the race from pole position. The sprint from the lights was relatively unspectacular, the field making it into and out of the otherwise unforgiving first corner in fluid fashion. Reinert, who had started alongside Faas, took the lead straightway. Kiss followed right in his draft, and the two tankpool24 Racing trucks ran side by side for a while. Then in the T6, the sweeping right-hander that brought so many racers to grief in free practice, Faas drifted a bit wide, put his driver’s-side wheels on the grass, lost several positions in the process, and crossed the line to complete the lap in 8th.
From there on, the field split up into two clusters, with Faas the solitary man-in-the-middle. Reinert led the first, followed by Kiss, Lenz, Kursim, Hahn, Lacko, and Halm. Then came Faas, and a group led by Janes, all in pursuit of the last two points-paying places, bringing up the rear. This group included Albacete, one of the top Titans. The Spaniard, disqualified from the earlier race and forced to start last as a consequence, was clearly quicker than his immediate competitors but just not able to put them behind him, and could only finish out of the points.
Mid-race it was time for a change in the lead. Kiss overtook Reinert and pulled away to win. The German in turn led a very tightly spaced pack consisting of Lenz, Kursim, Hahn, Lacko, and Halm across the line – six trucks within four seconds.
Faas was 8th, and on the last lap Brereton passed Janes to collect two points for 9th place. The Buggyra pilot had to console himself with only one point for finishing 10th.
Immediately after, Reinert was handed a 10 second penalty for overspeed. That dropped the MAN pilot to 7th in the classification, promoting the five drivers behind him by a position each.
To the right and left of Kiss on the podium stood Lenz and Kursim. Faas was joined on the Grammer Truck Cup podium by Brereton and Janes.
Tankpool24 Racing (Kiss / Faas), as mentioned, was the top team, ahead of Reinert Adventure (Lenz / Reinert) and „Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ (Hahn / Halm).
Hahn has stretched his lead in the standings somewhat and now has 188 points. Lacko is second with 131, followed by Kiss (121), Albacete (112), Halm (107), Lenz (96), Reinert (82), and Kursim (77).

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