Saturday in Nogaro Part 3 –Reinert is victor in second race

11. June 2016Nogaro - Polesitter Eduardo Rodrigues couldn’t quite capitalise on his position at the front of the grid. It might have been the distraction of son José’s victory in the first race of the Coupe de France Camions shortly before. In any case, nobody seriously imagined that the Portuguese would be able to stay in the lead for long anyway. But that he’d drop to the very end of the field in the first lap and a half was entirely unexpected.
So the lead was initially held by Ellen Lohr, but even she wasn’t able to withstand the pressure from the rear. The MAN pilotess was overtaken by Reinert, Hahn, and Lacko in short order. Then she had Janiec breathing down her neck. The Frenchman has the reputation – particularly here on the “home circuit” of his Lion Truck Racing team – of using every permitted means to make up places. But after a few attacks against Lohr he seemed to be conspicuously holding back.
That allowed Kiss to catch up and cleave to his rear crash guard, and now instead of attacking, the Frenchman had to fight off the aggressive Hungarian. This he did in proverbial fashion. It’s well known that creeping up to Janiec is one thing but overcoming him is something else altogether. And now, in the second race of each day only one point separates one place from the next, so the battles aren’t as hard-fought as they were last year. So Lohr, Janiec, and Kiss crossed the finish line in peaceful procession one second apart in places fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Towards the close Steffi Halm, who as a result of her losing a few laps in the first race started from the last spot on the grid, was rapidly closing in on the trio.
Lenz, Forman, und Kleinnagelvoort made up the rest of the points-place finishers.
All the while one expected that Hahn would attack his Reinert Adventure teammate René Reinert. At times it did look like the thrice-champ would finally get ahead, but try as he might he simply couldn’t force Reinert into an error even in the touch-and-go situations, and the Lusatian fleetowner drove to a narrow but safe victory.
Lacko followed at some remove in 3rd place. The Buggyra pilot later was given a 10 second elapsed-time penalty for overspeeding. All that did was cut the gap to Lohr to two seconds, but there was no change to the finishing order.
Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert) was the winning team, followed by WOW! Women On Wheels (Lohr / Halm) and Buggyra International (Lacko / Forman).
Lacko continues to lead the championship standings with 121 points ahead of Hahn (115), Reinert (79), Janiec (62), Kiss (61), and Körber (44).

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