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Saturday in Nogaro Part 1

Saturday in Nogaro Part 1

15. June 2013The bright sun and beautiful weather we’d had here in Nogaro yesterday vanished overnight. The sky was overcast, and temperatures stayed below 20°C till noon. And so the morning warm-up for the third round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Circuit Paul Armagnac was just that — a very literal warming-up for both, trucks and drivers. At the very least we can be thankful that it remained dry. And once again the two MAN pilots Antonio Albacete (ESP) and Jochen Hahn (GER) were at the top of the timesheet.
You can only expect things to get really serious in the timed practice, but even here the top drivers don’t necessarily go flat out. That’s because their priority is only to make it into the top 10 for the SuperPole. And the drivers approach this goal in different fashions. Albacete stepped up his speed to lap a good second quicker than he did in the warm-up, while Hahn drove slower and was content with the seventh-fastest time. Four more MAN drivers crowded into the top 10 — Norbert Kiss (HUN), Mika Mäkinen (FIN), and Markus Oestreich and René Reinert (both GER), leaving place for only the three Renault drivers Markus Bösiger (SUI), Adam Lacko (CZE), and Anthony Janiec (Frau), and the Czech David Vršecký in his Buggyra Freightliner.
Timed practice over, nobody was taking any chances in the SuperPole — after all, it’s now a question of securing the best starting position on the first five rows of the grid. And Albacete really stepped on it, blazing to the top of the timesheet with a lap of 1:52.244. Hahn too gained impressively, but remained a good three-tenths off the Spaniard’s pace. Kiss and Oestreich just one-tenth apart. Vršecký qualified fifth, ahead of Bösiger, Lacko, Mäkinen, Reinert, and Janiec.

Supported by Meritor Translation: Eliot Lobo

Impressions:

Saturday in Nogaro Part 1
Saturday in Nogaro Part 1
Saturday in Nogaro Part 1