Friday on the Ring

24. July 2009Nürburgring - Until yesterday it was only a sort of warm-up, but today it got really serious and the weather gods cooperated, too. There were only occasional light rain showers; the weather was a lot better than the services had originally forecast. The two free practice sessions were totally dominated by Antonio Albacate who is currently leading in the Championship. In the first practice the Spanish MAN pilot was more than 1 second faster than his nearest rivals which were, of course, again the ‘usual suspects’ – by now, together with Albacete, also called the G 4 – namely MAN colleague Jochen Hahn and the two Buggyra Freightliner pilots David Vrsecky and Markus Bösiger. In the second free practice Albacate was still more than half a second quicker than his opponents. Consequently nobody was surprised when in the timed practice Albacete at once clocked the fastest lap time. With 1:55.948 he was the only one to achieve a lap time below the 1:56 margin. Just fractionally slower was Hahn, followed by Bösiger and Vrsecky. In the fifth lap the Swiss drove into the pit; the crew adjusted the set-up and they evidently worked wonders. Normally in truck racing the fastest times are achieved right at the beginning – if the driving conditions on the track do not improve considerably – and soon after the tyres show first signs of fatigue. But now, in the penultimate lap, Bösiger set the fastest time (1:55.803) beating Albacete’s lap time by one and a half seconds, thus securing pole position for tomorrow’s first race.
Albacete will be second on the grid, ahead of Hahn and Vrsecky. Behind them are two more MAN pilots, Egon Allgäuer and Chris Levett, ahead of the first Renault driver, Markus Altenstrasser, and Balazs Szobi (MAN).
The timed practice for the Mittelrhein Cup was not quite that thrilling, even so no less exciting – particularly for the Lenz crew. On Heinz-Werner Lenz’ truck the transponder for the time recording had not been working, so that the ‘King of the Ring’ will have to start from the back of grid tomorrow. To secure pole position was plain sailing for Levett, who, same as Stuart Oliver, wants go gain points here which count towards the British Championship. Guest pilot Hans-Joachim Stuck, driving an Allgäuer MAN, as usual, is already an old hand in the truck racing business by now, so that it was no wonder when he secured 2nd starting slot ahead of Oliver. But it was certainly the surprise of the day when Uwe Nittel qualified for 9th position on the grid – in his very first performance in the RaceTruck, and with a starter field of 26. Sascha Lenz in his Mercedes Hauber clocked eleven fastest time; hence Nittel was the fastest pilot in the Lenz team.
But the big moment for Lenz jun., or practically for the entire Lenz team, was yet to come. The legendary Go-and-Stop had not only returned to the start-and-finish-straight, but also the ‘old’ modus was reinstated, without the turns. Just as in drag racing the trucks accelerate to maximum speed – street-legal ones are limited to radar controlled 90 km/h – and then have to brake with pinpoint accuracy. The first traffic cone has to be knocked over; the two others lined up behind the first one must remain standing. The contest of the production vehicles was won by Kurt Heinrichs, employee of Lenz’ sponsor Backes, and the opponents in the final were Lenz sr. and his son Sascha who in the semifinal beat Mikael Johansson (Scania), last year’s winner and the fastest driver in all the previous contests. And finally, with an advantage of only a hundredths the junior won the fight against the ‘King of the Ring’.