Adam Lacko delighted his home crowd with a final lap pass on chief title rival Jochen Hahn to win the first race at Autodrom Most.
Adam Lacko delighted his home crowd with a final lap pass on chief title rival Jochen Hahn to win the first race at Autodrom Most.
The Buggyra International Racing System Freightliner’s winning margin was a scant 0.076, one of the closest finishes in the history of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship.
Lacko had challenged pole-sitter Hahn for the lead into turn one, but could not find a way by the experienced German driver. Lap one also saw a Full Course Yellow to recover the stranded Team Schwabentruck Iveco of Gerd Körber, following a coming together with Anthony Janiec.
When the trucks were released again, Lacko set the fastest lap of the race on lap three, closing to within a few tenths of Hahn’s Team Reinert-entered MAN. Lap after lap, the Czech sought to find a way past, repeatedly nudging the rear of Hahn’s truck. The final lap saw a harder coming together and as a result Hahn completed the final lap with a smoking rear tyre. This gave Lacko the chance to make his move, pouncing on the exit of the final corner to take a popular victory, his tenth of the season so far.
Behind the leading duo, Steffi Halm made her seventh podium visit of the season, seeing off the challenge of Anthony Janiec’s Lion Truck Racing MAN to take third.
Halm made a good start to clear the Tankpool 24 Racing Mercedes-Benz driven by defending champion Norbert Kiss, but the Hungarian soon re-passed and was consolidating the position when he was hit with a drive-through penalty for a race start infringement.
That allowed Halm to resume third on lap five, with Janiec leading the group of trucks chasing her down after passing the second Buggyra Freightliner of Jiri Forman. However, Janiec’s challenge soon faded and the Frenchman would have to settle for fourth ahead of René Reinert, who recovered well from a five-position grid penalty, and Forman.
Ryan Smith had a quiet race to seventh in his MAN ahead of Sacha Lenz, who will start race Race Two from provisional pole after seeing off the challenge of Ellen Lohr to finish eighth by just two tenths of a second. Having fixed an oil leak in his steering that hampered him in qualifying, Lenz took advantage of others misfortune and made the crucial pass on Lohr to take his second reversed grid pole of the year.
Kiss recovered to tenth after his drive-through penalty, taking the final points-paying position from Tankpool 24 team-mate André Kursim.
In the team championship, Buggyra Racing 1969 took the victory, to the delight of team manager Jan Kalivoda.
The second race of the weekend is scheduled to take place at 17:15 this afternoon. You can follow all the live action from our Race Centre here.
Race one result remains provisional