Saturday in Le Mans Part 1 - Kiss on pole
12. October 2013Le Mans - Dawn broke over Le Mans on this, the first race day of the 10th and final round of the European Truck Racing Championship on the Circuit Bugatti, to the accompaniment of steady showers. Activity here traditionally kicks off early in the morning, and it was still dark when the truck racers took to the track for the first time, the temperature at 7– 8°C. The asphalt appeared very damp and slippery, and though the truck racers were all very cautious through the (particularly treacherous) curves, at times it looked like they were preparing for a drift challenge! All were probably very glad that in many places the asphalt doesn’t end where the race track does — in many of the curves the runoffs are very generously dimensioned, and all surfaced. Nevertheless, some of the racers still managed to skid off into the gravel and over the grass.
And so the times were of secondary importance; fine-tuning the trucks for the conditions was the priority. This could be seen in the second free practice as well, when at times there were more trucks in the pits than out on the track.
Meanwhile the sun did begin to shine through from time to time, but that had no effect on events on the track; the improvement in lap times was negligible compared to an hour and a half earlier, and without any real significance. In the first free practice Spaniard Antonio Albacete (MAN) was fastest; in the second it was his teammate Markus Oestreich (GER). The second Buggyra Freightliner piloted by Ellen Lohr created a stir with its pink-striped livery — to undiscerning observers it looked like a model right out of the Barbie collection, but behind the Go Pink! movement, which the team is supporting here in Le Mans, is the serious objective of raising awareness about breast cancer.
But all the attention was back to the racing when the first qualifying session started at noon. After the first lap it was clear that the conditions had improved drastically — most of the drivers were lapping more than 20 seconds quicker. Defending champ Jochen Hahn (GER) set the best time with a lap of 2:11.427s, followed by Frenchman Anthony Janiec (Renault) and Albacete, both within three-tenths of a second off the leader. There were large gaps between the times down the field, but then the continually drying track meant quicker laps all round were in the offing. While the first trucks were already back in the pits, their drivers secure in the belief that they’d gone fast enough for the SuperPole, Hungarian Norbert Kiss (MAN) blazed to the top of the timesheet with a lap under 2:10s, a time that was promptly cancelled. And so Kiss was once again out of the top 10, as was Oestreich. But both MANler managed to make the leap into the SuperPole bare seconds before the close of the session.
Hahn was followed by Janiec, Kiss, the Czech David Vršecký (Buggyra Freightliner), Albacete, MKR Renault pilots Adam Lacko (CZE) and Markus Bösiger (SUI), Germans René Reinert (MAN) and Oestreich, and Hungarian teen Benedek Major (MAN).
It started to drizzle again just as the lights at the pit exit turned green for the SuperPole. Even so, Oestreich managed to improve his time by a massive margin — to within a tenth of Hahn’s top time from qualifying. But then Kiss delivered a knockout with a 2:10.551s, followed in second by Oestreich less than a second off. Nobody else was able to improve their times from the timed practice, which resulted in unusually large intervals for a SuperPole.
Albacete in third was a good 1.7 seconds behind Kiss, followed by Lacko, Bösiger, Reinert, Vršecký, Hahn, Major, and Janiec, who was four seconds slower than his time in qualifying. A quarter of an hour later Hahn’s quickest lap was restored, which meant he was now in second place, displacing Oestreich. Consequently all the other drivers ahead of him were now pushed back a position.
Impressions:
