Sunday in Most Part 3 - Reinert wins his second of the season
02. September 2018Most - It remained dry at the start of Race 4, but no-one would have been surprised if it should have started again to rain. The race itself, watched by 90,000 spectators, passed without incident. Polesitter Brereton lost two positions on the sprint to the first corner and it was José Rodrigues who took the lead, with Reinert in tow. A few hundred metres further along, Brereton got into a skirmish and slid all the way across the gravel, ending up in P7. He continued to lose momentum over the subsequent laps and could manage only a P10 finish. Rodrigues didn’t hold on to his lead for long either; it took Reinert several dogged attempts, but he finally succeeded in snatching the lead from his Portuguese MAN colleague, with Kiss snuck in right behind.
Lacko, meanwhile, had gained a couple of places to P5. Just as Lenz in front of him braked heavily to avoid hitting an abruptly slowing Rodrigues, the Buggyra pilot saw his chance to move up into P4.
But Rodrigues just as suddenly found second wind, and rocketed away. A little later Lenz had to let his countryman Hahn past, and the Lacko-Hahn-Lenz trio proceeded apace, nose-to-tail. Everyone now waited with bated breath for The Great Hunt of the Portuguese quarry. After all, hadn’t the MAN pilot qualified more than two seconds slower than Lacko – never mind that the track was still damp then? And weren’t each of the trio’s lap times in the earlier race at least a second or two below Rodrigues’? It was only a matter of time before they’d swallow the Portuguese whole, right?
Wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. The three amigos were going nowhere. Lacko, as leader, kept dropping back, and his two sidekicks, for their part, appeared unable – or, indeed, unwilling – to make it past the Freightliner. Towards the close even Steffi Halm caught up with the foundering threesome, having just set the fastest lap of the race.
So no threat to Rodrigues in P3. At the front, meanwhile, Reinert had Kiss on his back but succeeded in shaking the Hungarian heavy off to seize his second win of the season.
Lacko, Hahn, Lenz, and Halm were followed home by Kursim in P8, Albacete, and Brereton. Consolation for the Brit was top spot in the Grammer Truck Cup, ahead of Faas and Spaniard Luis Recuenco (MAN).
Reinert Adventure (Lenz / Reinert) was the top team, followed onto the podium by tankpool24 Racing (Kiss / Faas) and „Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ (Hahn / Halm).
Hahn, with 231 points, retains his comfortable cushion atop the standings – Lacko has 183, followed by Kiss (156), Albacete und Lenz (both 132), Halm (123), Reinert (110), and Kursim (94).
Impressions:
