Saturday in Most Part 2 - Lacko seizes last-gasp win

03. September 2016Most - The temperature of the asphalt had risen to 42°C while the trucks were lining up in formation on the grid. It wasn’t quite as hot in the race itself, looking at it in retrospect.
First off, there was a curious occurrence shortly after the start. Körber’s Iveco was spun around in the rush to the first corner. In the process the cutoff switch, which by regulation has to be positioned on the outside of the truck, was knocked off. The truck was stalled right in the middle of the track and couldn’t be started up again.
In this situation, for the first time in the ETRC, Full Course Yellow (FCY) shields were displayed. This was the first time the truck racers were seeing this warning; in other racing series it notifies drivers of an absolute speed restriction of 80 km/h over the entire circuit.
On the restart, Hahn and Lacko were quicker to accelerate than the rest of the field. Kiss retrieved his third place, which he’d lost to Steffi Halm in the original start, and Körber gave chase from the rear of the field, even overtaking a few trucks. But the Iveco pilot had started a full lap down, and so ended up at the bottom of the classification.
Kiss meanwhile had earned himself a drive-through penalty applied retroactively for clearly cutting the line marking the track limit at the start. That not only cost him a podium place, but also (almost) shut him out of the points reckoning.
The racers lapped in formation, Hahn and Lacko fighting their own battle at the front followed at some remove by Halm, who faced no threat at all from Janiec and Reinert behind her. Forman was next, ahead of Smith and Lenz, who with his 8th-place finish collected pole position for the second race. Ellen Lohr was 9th, followed by Kiss, who – only he knows how – was able to drive his way back into the points at the expense of his tankpool24 teammate Kursim.
Back out in front, Lacko had touched Hahn in the rear a couple of times, forcing the loose-hanging right-hand rear mudguard on the MAN to flap against the tyre, which began to smoke heavily and stink of burning rubber. That, however, didn’t seem to be bothering Hahn any.
But at the start of the pit straight it looked like the MAN pilot had, for the briefest moment, drifted off his line. That was invitation enough for Lacko to dart alongside in a flash and carry the momentum through to the flag, getting the nose of his bonneted Buggyra across the timing beam 76-thousandths of a second ahead of Hahn’s flat-faced MAN.
Buggyra International (Lacko / Forman) took the team honours, ahead of Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert) and WOW! Woman On Wheels (Lohr / Halm).
Till shortly before the grid for the second race there was still no official classification, so it’s likely the one we’ve reported here could still change.

Impressions: