Friday, 29.03.2024 | Deutsch | English
Saturday in Navarra - Part 2

Saturday in Navarra - Part 2

01. June 2013Navarra - The whole day today the sun was shut out by the dark clouds, and the mercury just wasn´t able to break through the 15°C barrier. But it remained dry, thankfully, and the wind too had slacked, which meant there was no longer any real danger of it accelerating the trucks beyond 160 km/h downslope on some of the straights.
Oestreich had to relinquish his second place on the grid next to polesitter Kiss to teammate Albacete. As a result of a penalty he´d collected for a crash in Misano that demoted him by three places at the start in this, the following race, the MAN pilot now had Hahn and Vršecký too ahead of him. But the Buggyra driver made a poor start and Oese and Lacko were past him in a flash. At the front, Albacete clung tenaciously to the rear of Kiss´s MAN for two whole laps till the two trucks tangled in the sharp 120-degree corner at the end of the short back straight. This dropped Kiss down to fifth and Albacete, forced into the gravel, got bogged down and had no choice but to give up.
Hahn now had the lead presented to him, but whoever thought the defending champ from Altensteig would win from here surely hadn´t counted Oese into the equation. Followed by Lacko and Vršecký, the man from Fulda steadily closed in on Hahn and simply swept past on the inside of the open hairpin at the end of the long back straight, going on from there to take his first win of the season. Kiss meanwhile, determined to get ahead of Lacko and Vršecký at any cost, fought a bitter contest with the Czechs for third spot. He first overcame Vršecký, and then pushed past Lacko on the final lap, with Vršecký in tow.
Sixth place was hotly contested by Bösiger and Reinert, the German deciding the duel in his favour on the penultimate lap. Janiec made it to eighth, which puts him on pole for the second race, ahead of Mäkinen and the Czech Frankie Vojtíšek (MAN). Steffi Halm, having started in 9th, dropped back to 12th on the very first lap, then fought her way back to 10th, only to be pushed out of the points again by a hard-charging Reinert, who himself had fallen some way behind at the start.
That´s the way the top 10 crossed the finishing line, but Kiss was aware at the prizegiving ceremony that he could lose his third place as the stewards investigated the crash between him and Albacete. In the event, the Hungarian received a 30-second penalty, which dropped him down to 10th place. Vršecký was now third, and the six behind him also moved up a spot, which meant Mäkinen was in pole for the next race.
Kiss and his teammate Benedek Major (HUN) arrived too late for the grid formation and were obliged, together with some of the Spanish pilots, to start the race from the pit lane. That, fortuitously, kept them out of the spectacular crash that took place in the third curve only a few hundred metres after the start. At the front Mäkinen initially took the lead, followed by Janiec and Lacko, who had rocketed past Bösiger and Reinert. These two came together with Hahn and Vojtisek and spun. Vršecký and Oestreich took advantage of the situation to make up a couple of places. Reinert and Bösiger had to let most of the field past before they could take off again.
Albacete, starting from the rear of the 27-strong field because he´d crashed out in the first race, was making incredibly rapid progress — already 10th and therefore in the points after the very first lap, the Spaniard wasn´t going to be satisfied with just one point, and continued to plow his way through the field ahead of him. In the mean time Lacko had replaced Mäkinen and went on to build up a massive cushion over the Finn in only a few laps. Janiec led the pack of pursuers for a long while till he dropped to the rear at the finish.
Albacete meanwhile had effortlessly overtaken first Hahn and then Oestreich, and the two Bernau MAN teammates then got the better of both Janiec and Vršecký. Now in third, Albacete wasted no time taking off after Mäkinen, but the Finn was able to hold on to his second place, albeit by a mere second at the flag. Hahn and Kiss followed Vršecký closely in sixth and seventh, Kiss – like Albacete – having fought an an unbelievable battle up through the field.
Steffi Halm drove an exceptional race too. Having been promoted one spot to 10th because of Kiss´s failure to show up on the grid in time, she hung right in there till the middle of the race, then dropped to 12th when she was forced wide in one of the many sharp curves. But the young German MAN pilot fought back with an extraordinary display of aggression to take her first 8th place, and the three points that come with it. Janiec and Spaniard Javier Mariezcurrena (MAN) made up the last two places in the points.
Hahn continues to lead the drivers´ ranking with 64 points, ahead of Vršecký (60), Oestreich (52), Mäkinen (44), Lacko (43), Albacete (38), Bösiger (26), Kiss (24), and Reinert (23). Truck Sport Lutz Bernau (Albacete / Oestreich) was the top team in the first race, ahead of Castrol Team Hahn Racing (Hahn / Mäkinen) and MKR Technology (Lacko / Bösiger). The Hahn and Bernau teams traded places in the second race, while MKR stayed in third.

Supported by Meritor Translation: Eliot Lobo

Impressions:

Saturday in Navarra - Part 2
Saturday in Navarra - Part 2
Saturday in Navarra - Part 2
Saturday in Navarra - Part 2