REINERT TAKES RACE 2 VICTORY AS NEWELL RETURNS TO CHROME TOP STEP
Taking his third race win of the season, René Reinert held off a chasing Titan pack to take victory ahead of Steffi Halm and Jochen Hahn.
Bradley Smith managed to hold off Reinert’s move for the lead off the line, but an incident involving Luis Recuenco and Mark Taylor brought out the red flag and saw the race start reset. On the second time of asking, Reinert had the young Brit lined up going into the first chicane and had moved into the lead of the race as the grid filtered under the Dunlop Bridge.
Antonio Albacete tried to make a move on José Eduardo Rodrigues on the second start but pushed a bit too hard into the first chicane, causing the pair to come together. Rodrigues spun around, falling to the back of the grid, but he was able to continue negating the need for a second red flag.
Halm didn’t wait until the end of the first lap to move past Smith, chasing down Reinert for the win. It was a fight she would keep up for the full 11 laps but it would come to no fruition as she had to settle for second.
She had to keep an eye behind her as Hahn, Norbert Kiss and Sascha Lenz closed in on the lead pair. At the chequered flag, just over a second covered the top five, leaving the win up for grabs to the last moment. Both Halm and Kiss tried to make last lap moves to climb up a position - looking for first and third respectively - but neither could get enough of an advantage to make the position stick.
Hahn’s third place to Kiss’ fourth kept the Hungarian mathematically in reach, and he did not take his seventh title today. With Kiss now 84 points ahead, Hahn would have to outscore him by 14 points in Race 3 to prevent Kiss taking the title with five races to spare.
Bradley Smith crossed the line P6 overall and winner of Chrome on the track, but he was given a ten second penalty for overspeeding in the opening few laps of the race. This meant that, although he had fought valiantly to keep Albacete behind him for ten laps, he dropped to P9 overall, losing positions to Albacete, Newell (who also inherited the class win) and Rodrigues. He did his best to increase the gap but Newell knew what he was trying to do, and countered his improvements to keep them within the ten second penalty time.
Clemens Hecker took a well needed P3 after his DNF in Race 1. He sits fourth in the championship as Smith moves 12 points out in the lead and Newell jumps to second with his class win, but it was an improvement to how the day started for him. The movement at the top of the Chrome championship just goes to show how tight the class is, and how one or two bad races can be the difference between looking out of contention and being at the top of the standings.
Stefan Kursch tried his best to hang onto class P3, but the pack behind were too fast for him. He finished P5 in class behind Simon Reid and ahead of Recuenco. The pair had a coming together midway through the race, with Recuenco being spun around for the second time, but both continued and the incident was deemed as a racing incident.
Christian Ruppert and Craig Reid were the final two classified trucks, Reid having finished ahead of Ruppert on the track but being given a drive through penalty for hitting three penalty markers.
Taylor was unfortunately out of the race before it started, suffering heavy damage that saw him unable to continue in the opening red flag incident. The team will repair the truck and have everything crossed for luck to come back their way tomorrow as they look, once again, to recover the lost Chrome class lead. He now sits P3 in the standings, 17 points behind double-podium scorer Smith.
Faas was once again unable to take the start of the race as repairs to the Freightliner and engine continue.
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