Saturday at the Nürburgring Part 1 – Albacete vanquishes Hahn in clash of the Titans

30. June 2018Nürburgring - Early morning warm-up on the first race day of this 3rd round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at the Nürburgring was more than just an exercise to get the circulation going; many pilots were back in test mode after qualifying yesterday evening, some even improving on their qualifying times.
That high-voltage Super Pole session saw eventual polesitter Antonio Albacete (MAN) and Jochen Hahn (Iveco) alternately seize the advantage from each other by thousandths of a second. Behind them it wasn’t even about thousandths but about who was first to set – not once, but twice – identical times down to the millisecond. In both instances it was tankpool24 pilot Norbert Kiss (HUN) before German Sascha Lenz and that alone put him on 4th behind the two leaders and MAN pilot René Reinert.
And it was Kiss, not Lenz, who had things work in his favour again today in Race 1. The start itself was fluid and uneventful. Polesitter Albacete took the lead out of the first corner and the rest of the field looked like it was falling into rank behind him. But then came the first hard collisions, and Lenz turned out to be the primary victim. His truck was spun, landing him in the grass. Only when the rest of the field had passed was the MAN pilot able to put his wheels back onto the asphalt.
Not long after, his teammate René Reinert’s MAN-in-blue came to a stop at the side of the track, a battered driver’s-side door sheared almost clean off its hinges – among other damages. He then crawled back toward the pits. Two of the top five starters had already either dropped back or dropped out.
At the front the Spanish thrice champion expertly defended his lead to take his first win of the season. Hahn undertook no risks and refrained from any potentially mutually damaging attacks against his rival, following him by barely a truck length across the line – second place with 15 points was as good a finish as any for the runaway championship leader.
Kiss came in after a short interval, ahead of Czech Adam Lacko (Buggyra Freightliner) and Iveco pilotess Steffi Halm (GER).
The next three were involved in a protracted scrap for 6th. Portuguese driver José Rodrigues (MAN) held a slender lead over André Kursim (Iveco) throughout, but in the closing laps both collided. Kursim found himself with a couple of wheels off the track, losing him some ground. From then on, the Portuguese had no more difficulty asserting his position till the flag. Kursim, on the other hand, now had two of his compatriots breathing down his neck – Iveco colleague Gerd Körber and Sascha Lenz. The latter had risen steadily back up the ranks and now had 8th place firmly in his sights, for with it came pole position for Race 2 on the partially reversed grid. Kursim kept going in 7th, under intense pressure from
Körber and Lenz. The three ran almost alongside for most of the final lap, to wild cheers from the stands, but at the flag Kursim managed to keep his nose ahead.
Körber thus collected the coveted pole ahead of Lenz, whose superb chase finally went unrewarded.
The final point for 10th place was picked up by Briton Shane Brereton (MAN).
„Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ (Hahn / Halm) was the winning team, ahead of Truck Sport Bernau (Albacete / Recuenco) and tankpool24 (Kiss / Faas).
José Rodrigues topped the Grammer Cup classification, followed by Brereton and Frenchman Thomas Robineau (MAN).

Impressions: