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Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete

Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete

01. July 2018Nürburgring - The start of Sunday’s first race didn’t exactly unfold the way polesitter Hahn would have liked it to. The Iveco pilot couldn’t accelerate as fast as Albacete when the lights turned green. The Spaniard moved across on the sprint to take the lead into the first corner. Hahn clung to the MAN, unwilling to let go, and the rest of the field thundered after at full throttle. Space was in short supply, and contacts became unavoidable. In most cases the trucks came away with scrapes, but one of them received a mighty wallop – and that, again, was the MAN of homeboy Sascha Lenz. At the exit of the Mercedes Arena the black, yellow, and green truck was hit by another truck and spun around. And as it happened yesterday, Lenz had to let the whole field pass him by before he could reverse back onto the track and resume his race.
Developments up front weren’t tidy either. Hahn and Albacete touched on the entry to the Hatzenbach bend and the Spaniard went trough the sand. Reinert, who was right behind, drew alongside Albacete as he struggled to regain traction, and cut across the chicane to slot into 2nd behind Hahn.
Behind them things started to get scrappy again. Steffi Half came off the worst this time, and she had to return to the pits straightway in her no-longer-fit-to-drive Iveco.
While the trucks in the top third of the field continued to lap as a platoon, Lenz was ripping through the rear. Lap after lap he gained ground and was up into 10th when he ran out of road – and hope of collecting pole for the final race.
Just when it looked like the running order had crystallised, the Mercedes of 4th-placed Kiss came to an abrupt halt in a runoff with mechanical damage – three laps to the flag. Reinert meanwhile was crawling all over Hahn’s Iveco, but the desperately hoped-for chance to overtake never materialised.
Albacete was followed across the line by Lacko in 4th, then Kursim, Körber, Smith, J. Rodrigues, Janiec, and Lenz.
The race was over, but the stewards swung into action. Reinert was given a five-seconds penalty for shorting the chicane, which forced him to trade places with Albacete. Smith got 10 seconds for overspeeding. That put him down in 9th place, promoting J. Rodrigues and Janiec.
The partially reversed grid order for the final race means the Frenchman will thus start from pole.
For the third time this weekend the team honours went to „Die Bullen von Iveco Magirus“ (Hahn / Halm). Behind the Iveco pair came Reinert Adventure (Lenz / Reinert) and Truck Sport Bernau (Albacete / Recuenco).

Impressions:

Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete
Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete
Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete
Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete
Sunday at the Nürburgring Part 2 - Hahn pulls one back on Albacete