Saturday in Zolder Part 1 - Albacete blitzes Super Pole with half-second advantage over Hahn

15. September 2018Zolder - It was a cloudless night, the temperatures in the chilly single digits, and a carpet of dew covered every bit of ground that was open to the sky. At warm-up the sun was still too weak to dry out the asphalt and it took the truck racers a while to push it to the limit. Not surprisingly, many set their fastest times only on the final lap.
German Jochen Hahn (Iveco) went on top with a 1:59.822, presently to be joined under the 2min mark by Spaniard Antonio Albacete (MAN). Both were some way off from their top times. More than anything else, however, the warm-up served as a performance check for the teams, some of whom had worked on their trucks’ setups till late in the night.
The start of Q1 was delayed by 15 minutes while a massive oil leak from a truck belonging to the Dutch championship was mopped up.
Hahn was fastest in 1:58.731 and Czech Adam Lacko two tenths off in his Buggyra Freightliner. These weren’t top times, not by a long chalk, but good enough for them – and most of the Top 10 – to decide to come in immediately in the interest of tyre conservation. Hahn and Lacko were joined in the Super Pole by MAN pilot René Reinert (GER), Hungarian Norbert Kiss (Mercedes-Benz), an MAN trio consisting of Sascha Lenz (GER), Albacete, and José Rodrigues (POR) , and Germans Steffi Halm (Iveco), Steffen Faas (Mercedes-Benz), and André Kursim (Iveco).
After five minutes in a holding pattern in pit lane, these 10 emerged for the final shootout that would decide the first five rows of the grid.
Despite lagging in the first two sectors, Albacete came through the third like a rocket to top the timing monitor with a massive 1.5s improvement over his Q1 time. Hahn and Lacko bettered their times too, but they were still around two tenths slower than the Spaniard.
After a cooling-off lap they were back on the gas. Hahn put a 1:57.828 on the clock and seemed to have pocketed pole, but Albacete countered instantly with a 1:57.332 – biting almost half a second off the quad-champ’s time. Lacko, Reinert, Kursim, Kiss, Lenz, Steffi Halm, Faas, José Rodrigues came following after.