LUCKY 13 FOR KISS WITH RACE 3 VICTORY
Norbert Kiss has taken his thirteenth victory of the season ahead of Jochen Hahn and Sascha Lenz in the penultimate race at Most.
A first corner incident forced a race restart, but both times Kiss had the run on Hahn going into the first corner. From there, he built up a strong lead over the rest of the pack with another textbook drive to secure victory. It was a quiet race for Hahn and Lenz too, who managed their positions well to secure second and third respectively.
The fight was on for fourth as Antonio Albacete found himself under pressure from René Reinert and José Eduardo Rodrigues. Reinert was recovering from a brake failure that impeded him during qualifying, but the fix between sessions looked to have resolved the problem, with Reinert back on the pace as soon as racing went green.
The trio came together on the second restart, Albacete defending hard to keep track position. The incident took a massive chunk out of Rodrigues’ front bumper, but he was able to race on. The train ran through all the way to the chequered flag, with the trio separated by 1.3s.
Getting tangled in the first start caused damage to Steffi Halm’s front bumper. Repairs were completed before the race restarted, but it’s possible there was more damage than first suspected, as her pace looked off from the beginning of the race. She really struggled to pass Chrome winner Clemens Hecker for P7, and finished the race behind him despite spending the last three laps on his bumper. The consolation is that her P8 finish gives her reverse pole for the final race of the weekend.
Mark Taylor needed a good day today, and needed to outscore both John Newell and Bradley Smith. Newell started ahead of him, but Taylor got his head down and did what he does best. The P2 for him and P4 for Newell saw him outscore his compatriot to move him back to second in the Chrome standings. Smith, who completed the Chrome podium with P3, extends his lead over Taylor to 14 points.
It was a bit of a race that could have been for Luis Recuenco, who finished fifth in class after starting on class pole. The first start saw a red flag caused by an incident between Recuenco and Martin Macík. Luckily, both were able to take the restart to keep all 16 trucks on the grid, but it was almost a repeat of the same mistake second time around, seeing Recuenco drop down the order. He managed to hold off Luke Garrett at the end of the race to keep P5.
Macík and Christian Ruppert completed the classified order, with Steffen Faas once again unable to classify. It was a real shame because after yesterday’s engine change and the fuel injector failure that saw him unable to take part in qualifying, he was racing really well and was on track for a Chrome podium. It wasn’t to be as, in what is becoming a common sight, the tankpool24-Racing Freightliner pulled up on the side of the Autodrom Most.
Of the 17 races that have been run in the 2025 season, Faas has only completed nine of them. Faas will not take part in Race 4, meaning he will have only classified in half the races completed this season at the end of the Most weekend.
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