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Sunday in Le Mans Part 1 – Kiss sweeps up last SuperPole of the season

Sunday in Le Mans Part 1 – Kiss sweeps up last SuperPole of the season

11. October 2015Le Mans - The second race day of the 10th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at Circuit Bugatti in Le Mans began as early as the first, and it was still pitch dark as the teams went to collect their tyre allocations from the TRO tent.
It wasn’t as chill as it had been the night before, but every surface was clammy, even the asphalt on the track. An obvious consequence was that times in the warm-up were no better than in free practice yesterday. Hungarian MAN pilot Norbert Kiss was once again quickest.
There was still no sunshine during qualifying, but the damp seemed to have disappeared from the track. Kiss accordingly improved his time by four seconds to 2:07.330s, then promptly dived into the pits to conserver his tyres.
The next seven drivers to top the timing monitor all did likewise, including Iveco pilot Gerd Körber (GER). The German, once bitten yesterday when his team called him in prematurely, wasn’t in danger of being dumped out of the Top 10 this time round. The grip levels on the track didn’t seem to be improving materially, and any apprehensions Körber may have had were unfounded as there remained others between him and the dreaded 10th place.
René Reinert (GER), on the other hand, was another of those who felt certain of a Top 10 place, but suddenly found himself perilously at the edge in 9th. The two MANamazons in the field, Ellen Lohr and Steffi Halm (both GER) looked like they’d taken it upon themselves to oust him. So Reinert drove back out at the last minute but wasn’t able to go any quicker than he already had. Then all he could do was watch as compatriot Sascha Lenz (MAN) snatched even 10th place out of his grasp.
And if that weren’t enough of a setback, the Lusatian was penalised for overspeeding as a result of a gearbox problem. His times were all cancelled, which meant he’ll have to start in 16th, at the tail end of the grid.
In the SuperPole Kiss once again set a time that nobody could match – 2:06.213s – even though almost everyone kept going quicker with each successive lap... the Hungarian too. His polewinning time at the end read 2:06.180s.
The remaining places in the first five rows of the grid for Sunday’s first race were taken by MAN pilot Antonio Albacete (ESP), the two Czechs David Vršecký and Adam Lacko (both Freightliner), Germans Jochen Hahn (MAN) and Körber, MAN pilot Antony Janiec (FRA), Lohr, Halm, and Lenz.

Impressions:

Sunday in Le Mans Part 1 – Kiss sweeps up last SuperPole of the season
Sunday in Le Mans Part 1 – Kiss sweeps up last SuperPole of the season