Saturday on the Nürburgring
13. July 2013Nürburgring - It was rather cool this morning, on the first day of competition at the Truck Grand Prix, the fifth round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship on the Nürburgring. At 10°C, the chill was getting to the many thousand fans who’d warmed themselves singing along at pop superstar Nena’s evening concert in the Müllenbachschleife yesterday. The truck racers got going early, the top qualifiers in the SuperPole yesterday – the two MAN pilots Antonio Albacete (ESP) and Jochen Hahn (GER), and the Czech David Vršecký (Buggyra Freightliner) – setting a brisk pace in the warm-up. These three, predictably, finished on the podium, but not quite in the order in which they started. Polesitter Albacete took the lead right at the start, with Hahn and Vršecký in his wake. But towards the end of the second lap, to the jubilation of the German fans, Hahn overtook his Spanish MAN colleague on the exit of the NGK chicane just before the track straightens out onto the finish straight. The two then pulled away steadily from the rest of the field for an MAN one-two, Hahn winning this battle of equals by less than a second. Vršecký followed a forlorn third.
For a long time it looked like Markus Oestreich (GER) would take fourth place uncontested, but towards the end of the race Swissman Markus Bösiger in his MKR Renault had closed in and was harrying the MAN. Oese was eventually able to save his fourth place only by a hair’s breadth — seven-tenths of a second.
MAN pilot René Reinert was the surprise package of the race. The businessman from Lausitz had set the sixth-fastest time in yesterday’s SuperPole, and he held on to that position till the flag. Behind him there was a bitter contest for seventh place between the Hungarian Norbert Kiss (MAN) and the Czech Adam Lacko (MKR Renault), but Kiss was able to ease ahead on the finish straight to cross the line nine-tenths ahead. Lacko’s consolation was that his eighth-place finish meant he would start the second race on pole. The last two points finishers were Jean-Pierre Blaise (Renault) of Belgium and the MAN pilot Benedek Major (HUN).
Before the second race we had a TGP novelty — a half-hour Grid Walk open to all. At the end of the 30 minutes, you can imagine, it was no easy job for the marshals to tear the exuberant fans away. Most had never experienced anything like this, and they were determined to enjoy it for as long as they could! The drivers for their part enjoyed all the attention, and the engagement with the fans.
The race itself started at 12:45 pm. The weather remained pleasant, the sun peeping through the clouds every now and again, the temperature at under 20°C. And it stayed dry. At the start, polesitter Lacko surged ahead in relaxed fashion, and a heated skirmish behind him right in the Mercedes Arena only helped him to build out his lead. He’d been followed by Oestreich and Reinert in second and third, ahead of Albacete, Vršecký, Hahn, and Kiss. The last two came together forcefully in the second lap, the collision ending Kiss’s race and setting Hahn back a long way. He then also had to visit the pits to have loosened plastic panels that were interfering with his rear tyres removed. He was now a whole lap down on Lacko, but the bantam from Altensteig fought on with élan. Hahn sure knows what he owes his fans!
Back at the front Albacete had overtaken Reinert. The German, for his part, held off the pressure from Vršecký for another four laps before the Czech too passed the blue-and-white MAN. Albacete, meanwhile, had gotten past his Truck Sport Bernau teammate to take the flag in second place, leaving Oestreich to fend off a spirited attack from Vršecký. In the last lap, in the NGK chicane, a few hundred metres before the finish, Vršecký mounted a final assault. Oese’s MAN and the Buggyra Freightliner touched, the Czech coming off second best and almost ceding his position to an opportunistic Reinert in the bargain. At the flag, though, Vršecký was able to salvage fourth by the barest three-tenths of a second.
Bösiger finished in sixth, ahead of Major, Frenchman Anthony Janiec (Renault), Blaise, and Stephanie Halm (GER) in an MAN. And then, as it’s happened so often this season, the race commission had the last word — Blaise was given a 30 second penalty that dropped him back to 14th; Halm consequently moved up to ninth, and her compatriot Gerd Körber (Iveco) took the final point available.
The race was followed immediately after by the first round of the Mittelrhein-Cup, which counts towards the British championship and is contested primarily by drivers from the isle. But there are also double-starters who take on the stress of participating in the FIA ETRC as well as the race for the Mittelrhein Cup — and one of those was René Reinert. And the man from Lausitz, shortly after his fifth place in the FIA race, drove to an undisputed – and much celebrated – victory in the Mittelrhein Cup ahead of the two British MAN pilots Matt Summerfield and Stuart Oliver.
Albacete now leads the overall standings with 190 points, having extended his lead over Hahn (175). They are followed by Oestreich (149), Vršecký (135), Kiss (127), and Lacko (104).
Truck Sport Lutz Bernau (Albacete / Oestreich) was the top team in the first race, followed in the ranking by Castrol Team Hahn Racing (Hahn / Mäkinen) and MKR Technology (Lacko / Bösiger). In the second race MKR stood on top of the podium, with Bernau und Team Blaise Janiec (Janiec / Blaise) in second and third.
Supported by Meritor Translation: Eliot Lobo
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