Sunday in Navarra Part 1 - Albacete on pole

08. June 2014Los Arcos - After a cloudless night, the temperature wasn’t quite 15° at the start of warm-up on the second day of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship round at the Circuito de Navarra, so some of the racers decided to go at their laps with gusto. Jochen Hahn (GER) and Norbert Kiss (HUN) for MAN and the two Czechs Adam Lacko and David Vršecký (Buggyra Freightliner) were already under 2:10s, although these times didn’t really count for anything.
In the first qualifying session Spaniard Antonio Albacete (MAN) stepped up his thitherto languorous pace dramatically to record a 2:08.819s, the quickest lap thus far this weekend. Kiss was the only other driver to come close. The rest – Markus Bösiger (SUI), Hahn, Vršecký, Lacko, Benedek Major (HUN), and René Reinert (GER), both MAN – seemed to be content with times they believed good enough to keep them in the Top 10, returning to the pits after only one flying lap. Conserving their tyres was top priority given the high track temperatures anticipated.
Only the two final spots for the SuperPole were fiercely contested till the end. José Teodosio and his Portuguese compatriot and VTR Europart teammate José Rodrigues, both Renault, both appeared to have made it, before Steffi Halm (GER) once again leapfrogged both of them in her MAN in the very last second of the session and so knocked Rodrigues out of the Top 10.
The shootout began and Albacete just didn’t seem able to match his qualifying time, let alone come close. Kiss meanwhile had gone quicker, and seemed assured of pole … till the Spaniard, in his very last lap, pulled out all the stops to undercut the Hungarian by four-tenths with an absolute top time of 2:08.602s. Bösiger was third, ahead of Hahn, Lacko, Vršecký, Reinert, Major, Halm, and Teodosio.

Impressions: