The third round of racing at Jarama Circuit was hit with a delayed start, but this didn’t prevent Norbert Kiss from taking his tenth win of the season.
Race 3 saw two hours of delays to the start of the race after the Spanish Truck Championship left oil spilled in the third sector and rain fell on the track. The FIA ETRC drivers were sent out for three investigation laps to gauge the conditions and voted on whether it was safe to go racing. The drivers voted for the race to go ahead, so long as sector three was held under yellow flag conditions throughout the race.
After three full course yellow laps to start the race as the rain continued to fall, Kiss led the field away with him and home favourite Antonio Albacete breaking off from the chasing pack. Albacete finished four seconds down on Kiss in second, both of them having a clean and fairly simple race to the chequered flag.
It was the battle for third that kept fans on the edge of their seat, with Adam Lacko putting in the defensive drive of his life to keep Jochen Hahn behind. There were a couple of moments where it looked like Hahn had done enough to make the pass, but until lap 10 the two were fighting nose to tail and side-by-side for the bottom step of the podium. The unpredictable conditions made Hahn back out of a final ditch attempt to pass Lacko, gifting the Czech driver a well-deserved third place finish.
Lacko’s championship rival Sascha Lenz came across the line in fifth behind the battling duo with a three second gap.
Steffi Halm had another great race, coming home sixth ahead of André Kursim and Goodyear Cup winner, and reverse pole sitter, Téo Calvet.
After her great performance in qualifying, Aliyyah Koloc took second in the Goodyear Cup to make it a Buggyra Racing one-two in class.
Anthony Janiec had a big moment in the middle of the race, going across the grass in his MAN truck, but was able to keep it going and not lose any positions to claim tenth overall
Tenth-place starter José Rodrigues secured the bottom step of the Goodyear podium, and finished ahead of Jamie Andersen, Steffen Faas, Luke Garrett and René Reinert.
Shane Brereton was hit with a ten second penalty for overspeeding that dropped him down to 16th in the final order, and with all 17 truck making it through the difficult race, Heinrich Hecker brought up the rear of the grid.