KISS TAKES DOMINANT WIN IN GRAND FINAL


28 March 2021

After winning the ETRC Digital Racing Challenge, Hungarian racer Norbert Kiss took a dominant win in the final showdown against his fellow truck racers and the top sim racers.

Norbert Kiss topped the time sheets in qualifying ahead of sim racer champion Enrique Marcos and Lukas Hahn. The field was certainly closely together in qualifying, with the 18 racers only 3.6 seconds apart in the battle for grid positions.

There was plenty of action at the start and a tight battle between the top three as they raced into the first corner with even some contact between them. Norbert Kiss came out on top in turn 2 and started to open up a gap. Hahn managed to get past Enrique Marcos into second. 

There was more drama in the opening lap further back on the grid, after Jose Maria Diezma made contact with German Tobias Martinez, who in turn collected Sascha Lenz. Diezma later got hit with a drive-through penalty for pushing.

In the front, Hahn was under attack from Marcos who kept putting the pressure on the German while the Spaniard himself was closely followed by Robbin Kruithof. While the trio battled for position, Norbert Kiss was getting away from the field.

In the Grand Final race, the drivers had to make a mandatory pit stop which added additional excitement into the mix. 

Enrique Marcos went in for his pit stop and came out just behind Lukas Hahn. Marcos held onto the inside line as the drivers made contact, which saw the Spaniard drop back into sixth.

As the pair battled for position, Robbin Kruithof took advantage and was able to dive past the pair to move into second position.

The race saw a reshuffle in positions as several drivers received penalties in the closing stages of the race. Hahn in third got slapped with a drive-through penalty for the earlier incident with Enrique Marcos, which saw him rejoin the field in seventh. Manuel Alvarez, who inherited third place from Hahn received a 5-second time penalty for pushing Enrique Marcos. 

When the chequered flag fell, Norbert Kiss took a dominant win in the Grand Final ahead of Robbin Kruithof and Marcel Maettig, who won the sim racer class.

After qualifying in tenth, Sascha Lenz had a great recovery drive in the race as the German racer finished just outside the top 3 in fourth.


Full results HERE