Saturday in Most Part 1 – Albacete masters drying track to put his MAN on pole

01. September 2018Most - Both free practice sessions yesterday for this 5th round of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship at Autodrom Most took place in near ideal conditions. But then it rained overnight. Warm-up this morning was accompanied by a steady drizzle, enough to slow the trucks in the initial laps by up to 20 seconds compared to their FP2 times.
Local favourite Adam Lacko set the early pace – unsurprisingly, given the Buggyra Freightliner pilot’s reputation as a wizard in the wet. But the rain let up, the circuit began to dry out, and driver after driver proceeded to undercut Lacko’s best time. In the final seconds the Czech retorted with a zinger. Now 2:17.272 is certainly nothing to shout about from the rooftops, but his closest rival Antonio Albacete (MAN) took almost a full second more. This, again, was just warm-up, with nothing at stake.
The skies didn’t clear till qualifying, but there was no more precipitation either. Lacko promptly went more than a second quicker on his first flyer, pacing the rest of the field. It was immediately evident, though, that the top pilots would have to abandon their usual procedure of pitting after just one hot lap – things hotted up, lap times tumbled, and nobody could rest assured of a place in the Super Pole. At the end of it all, Lacko’s initial time would have sufficed only for 7th place. The entire field had no choice but to just keep at it.
Lacko eventually picked up by more than 2,5 seconds to close Q1 on top with 2:14.765, German MAN pilot Sascha Lenz trailing by a mere 15 hundredths. The rest of the Super Pole slots went to Iveco pilot Jochen Hahn (GER), Hungarian Norbert Kiss (Mercedes-Benz), Albacete, Germans Steffi Halm, André Kursim (both Iveco), and René Reinert (MAN), Portuguese José Rodrigues, and Brit Shane Brereton (both also MAN).
The Super Pole started after a 20 minute delay. Steffen Faas’s (GER) Mercedes had lost propulsion on the first lap of qualifying and needed to be towed back into the pits. But the fans were more than recompensed with a suspenseful shootout. Lacko again set the top time, a 2:12.745. Kiss countered directly with a 2:12.556, which he then proceeded to better to 2:11.768. Out of the blue, Kursim shot to second place with a 2:11.903. Only a couple of minutes remained on the countdown timer – then a sudden rash of events resulted in a near shakeout. Kursim’s top time was eventually only good for 7th. Albacete captured pole in 2:10.558, on the second of two blistering laps back to back. He was more than a tenth quicker than Kiss, even though the Hungarian had improved his own top time by a huge margin. Lenz was 3rd, followed by Hahn, Halm, and Lacko. Not quite one second separated the polesitter from the man in 6th.
Kursim in 7th was followed by J. Rodrigues, Reinert, and Brereton, whose MAN had leaked oil on his final lap and would have to be towed back up pit lane. Without this incident we’d very likely have seen further changes on the timing monitor till the very end.

Impressions: