HAHN STARTS 2025 SEASON WITH POLE POSITION
New season, fresh start for the grid and a new face taking the top spot in qualifying.
Jochen Hahn starts the new season of the Goodyear FIA European Truck Racing Championship with a pole position. He beat second placed Antonio Albacete by six tenths of a second with his time topping 2:02.025.
Continuing the qualifying format from 2024, the session was broken into three sections. With 17 trucks racing this weekend, five are eliminated from Q1, six from Q2, leaving six trucks to fight it out for pole position.
Q1 saw only 15 trucks take to the track as Steffen Faas and reigning champion Norbert Kiss were stuck in the paddock, both Kiss and Faas with steering issues. The duo had detected these issues in this morning’s practice sessions, but did not have enough time to fix the issues before qualifying began. Q1 is 12 minutes long, but neither Faas or Kiss could complete the required fixes to get out and set a time.
New to the grid for 2025, Christian Ruppert, had his first taste of competitive qualifying around the Misano World Circuit. His 2:09.513 placed him P14 behind Luke Garrett as the other driver eliminated from Q1. It was a great effort from Garrett, who missed out on Q2 by six tenths, considering the Brit spent both free practice sessions in the garage fixing issues on his truck. The laps he completed in qualifying were his first of the weekend.
Q2 saw the battle of the Chrome drivers as they fought for class pole position. It was a tricky session for John Newell who struggled to find the pace around the Misano circuit. He improved in his final lap, going from 14 seconds off the pace to six tenths, but he could do no better than P12. Race by race entry Jonathan André was P11 as the last driver outside the top ten.
Clemens Hecker took tenth behind Luis Recuenco and Bradley Smith in his first full season race for Don’t Touch Racing. The P8 and P9 are net Chrome class P2 and P3 for Smith and Recuenco, with Chrome pole sitter Mark Taylor starting P6 overall looking to be in a league of his own.
José Eduardo Rodrigues just missed out on making Q3 for his first race as a Titan driver, making Chrome pole sitter Taylor the only non-Titan in the top six.
In the final session of qualifying, only Sascha Lenz was able to set two lap times, with everyone else getting one flying lap. This has become the expected in Q3 sessions as the trucks only have six minutes to get their final laps locked in. Quickly, eyes were on Hahn who had topped the timing board throughout Q1 and Q2.
Albacete tried all he could, but Hahn had too much in his sleeve to relinquish provisional pole position. Steffi Halm had a great showing in her IVECO, starting P3 on the grid.
Lenz’ two laps helped him secure a second row start with a final lap improvement, beating René Reinert in the final moments of Q3. Having not raced in the Goodyear FIA ETRC for three years, Reinert came back meaning business as he raced Kiss’ old truck to a P5 start in the first race of the season.
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