Saturday in Le Mans Part 3 – In which Janiec wins the most impact-ful race of the season and is subsequently disqualified

08. October 2016Le Mans - Homeboy Anthony Janiec won probably the most perilous race of the season, but his team’s jubilation was short-lived.
The entire schedule had been delayed a bit, which in Le Mans poses a particular hazard given that races here start later in the day even though it’s autumn already and dusk falls sooner.
Lenz was on pole with Lohr alongside, and Janiec right behind in a third MAN. The Frenchman isn’t exactly known to treat his competitors with kid gloves, and he touched Ellen Lohr just in the first chicane. Two kilometres further along, at the end of the short back straight, Janiec attempted to barge ahead of polesitter Lenz. The speed differential between the two trucks was plain to see. Lenz’s truck became an unwitting brake block for the bounding Lion MAN and was spun around. Janiec simply swung out and continued on his way, but Ellen Lohr was caught smack by the pirouetting MAN-in-orange.
The two Germans were stuck in the gravel. Try as they might, they just couldn’t get their trucks to move.
The red flags were out, and it took a while for the trucks to be extricated and towed back to the pits, till the mop-up was complete and the race could be restarted. By now the high-mast floodlights were ablaze – Circuit Bugatti is, after all, a 24h circuit.
The restart was held in the original formation since the race had been stopped before the completion of the first lap. We were now three quarters of an hour behind schedule. In the absence of the two front-row starters from the original grid, Janiec and Stefanie Halm made up the front row, the Frenchman putatively on pole.
But this second attempt was doomed almost right from the word go. Halm had Lacko directly behind her, and the Czech somehow didn’t seem to be able to get up to speed. The explanation later was that the Buggyra just wouldn’t upshift. The drivers accelerating from behind evidently discerned the obstacle a tad too late. Kleinnagelvoort’s Scania was the first to ram the Freightliner, triggering a pileup.
For the second time the race had to be stopped abruptly. By the time the dust had settled, all the packed-to-capacity grandstand could see was a smouldering heap of wreckage. Some of the drivers were trapped in cabins that had badly twisted, jamming their doors shut.
Another interval, followed by a second restart in the original formation – or rather, what was left of it. By now we were an hour and a quarter behind schedule.
The field was cut in half – only eight of the 16 entries remained, and of those, the Iveco of Körber had some mechanical ailments. Three-quarters into the heat “Mr. Truckracing” decided it was enough, that he’d pushed his steed beyond endurance. Since there was nobody else behind him, there was no taking 8th place – and 3 points – from him anyway, so he swerved back into pit lane.
Janiec had seized the lead, and even if Halm came close to challenging him for it on a couple of occasions, particularly towards the close, it was clear that neither she, nor anybody else for that matter, had much appetite for risk anymore.
Reinert, running 3rd all this time, had teammate Hahn pretty much snorting down his neck throughout. The two put on some semblance of a fight, which the crowd had been denied for so long. What impressed us was how they, and Kiss as well, having closed up, would come to within a couple of centimetres of each other without touching or causing the other any damage in the least.
Forman trailed Kiss in 6th, ahead of the wildly cheered MAN pilot Eduardo Rodrigues (POR). Körber had classified 8th without having to finish.
For the umpteenth time the team honours went –how could it be otherwise – to Reinert Adventure (Hahn / Reinert), the only team whose trucks both crossed the finish line.
Second among the teams was Lion Racing-Lenz (Janiec / Lenz), followed by WOW! Women On Wheels (Lohr / Halm).
Hahn had already bagged the drivers championship and Lacko didn’t collect any points, so everyone’s attention was focused on how the battle for 3rd place would develop.
Then came the pronouncement that Janiec would be excluded from the classification for transgressing the FIA “Driving Standard”.
Had that ruling been issued earlier, we’d have had the three Hahn trucks on the podium, as after Race 3 in Zolder – only with the order reversed. The team podium too would have looked different.
Reinert still leads that race with 240 points. Halm is only one point closer at 221, with Kiss five points behind in 216 and Janiec a further 10 points behind the Hungarian on 196.

Impressions: