KISS ON POLE FOR RACE 3 AT LE MANS BUGATTI
Doing everything he needs to do to clinch his seventh Goodyear FIA European Truck Racing Championship title in Race 3, Norbert Kiss has secured his twelfth pole of the season.
Taking pole with just three laps, Kiss topped the timing board in all session, beating Jochen Hahn to overall pole by half a second. His main advantage came in sector one, and even though the rest of the Titan field was closer to his sector times in two and three, he already had enough of an advantage in sector one to claim his 12th pole position of the season.
Hahn will take the front row with Kiss for Race 3, where a lot will have to fall his way to stop the Hungarian becoming the championship’s first seven-time champion. With the advantage Kiss has, Hahn would need to outscore him by 14 points in Race 3 to keep the fight alive for another race.
Third place went to José Eduardo Rodrigues, who put in a strong showing to be consistently in the top three fight. He will line up beside Sascha Lenz finishing with the fourth fastest time.
Both Antonio Albacete and Steffi Halm were handed a track limits penalty in Q3, which saw their relevant lap time deleted. As Q3 saw all six trucks only complete a single flying lap, it meant that the duo came out of Q3 without a legal lap time. Because of this, their positions in Q2 were used to determine who would start P5 and P6. Halm only just managed to demote René Reinert out of Q3, so takes P6 behind Albacete on the Race 3 grid.
Luis Recuenco has found some pace overnight, taking Chrome pole from Mark Taylor by two tenths of a second. He was on the pace from Q1, and looked to be a threat to the class top three, but he’ll be happy with leading the class off the line after Race 2.
Taylor lines up next to Chrome rival John Newell to make it an all British row five, with Clemens Hecker just behind in class P4. Steffen Faas was back on the track today after missing most of yesterday to an engine change, and the pace looks good. He will start beside Hecker and look to get some decent points on the board in the last two races of the weekend.
From the highs of yesterday, Bradley Smith had a bit of a bringing down to earth as he found himself eliminated from Q1. He missed out on a Q2 position by a couple of tenths of a second and is not too far behind his Chrome championship rivals, but he will have not planned on starting behind all three of them after taking Chrome pole yesterday.
After hefty repairs to his truck last night, where they whole #onetruckfamily came together to make sure he was on the grid today, Luke Garrett took P7 in class. He’s not been 100% comfortable with the #42 since the first turbo failure at the end of FP2, but is still showing decent pace nonetheless. After last weekend’s Sunday performance, he’ll be hoping for more of the same today.
The Reid brothers take the penultimate row of the grid, Simon ahead of Craig, whilst Stefan Kursch and Christian Ruppert conclude the grid after all 18 trucks qualified.
Race 3 gets underway at 1400 local time, where we very likely will see history be made.
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