Rene Reinert is triumphant after intense battle with Norbert Kiss in final Most race...
Rene Reinert won the final race of the weekend at Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic this afternoon in his Reinert Racing MAN.
Savouring his second victory in the 2018 FIA European Truck Racing Championship, Reinert just led home Norbert Kiss’ Tankpool24 Racing Mercedes-Benz by 0.2s in another tense and exciting finale.
The German went someway to compensating himself for losing yesterday’s second race at the final corner to Adam Lacko.
The first lap saw high drama as first Antonio Albacete ran through the gravel at the first corner and then pole-sitter Shane Brereton also took an excursion and dropped down to seventh position after contact with Kiss’ Mercedes Benz. Both Kiss and Brereton were placed under investigation for the incident but no further action was taken.
That incident came just after Jose Rodrigues (Reboconort MAN) had snatched the lead going down to the first corner as the Portuguese driver earned a narrow lead over Reinert.
Reinert though immediately pressured Rodrigues for the lead but was in turn also caught by a flying Norbert Kiss, as the Portuguese driver created a bottleneck.
The German though was soon able to make a clean pass for the lead and Kiss followed suit and started to hunt down the new leader.
Rodrigues meanwhile held off Adam Lacko and Jochen Hahn, who had both come through from the fourth row of the grid together.
Lacko initially pressured Rodrigues but also had to watch his mirrors as Hahn nudged the back of the Buggyra International Racing System Freightliner.
The two title rivals circulated nose to tail for the majority of the race, giving Rodrigues some breathing space in third.
In fact the Portuguese eventually pulled clear and joined the scrap for the lead in the final laps. However, he was unable to do anything about the leaders and settled for third. It was his first overall podium position since Red Bull Ring in May 2017 when he took a richly merited but unexpected first ever victory.
Lacko completed his defensive race for fourth, while a frustrated Hahn buzzed around his rear but had to settle for fifth.
The pair were joined by Sascha Lenz’s SL Trucksport MAN and Steffi Halm’s Team Schwabentruck IVECO truck in sixth and seventh during the second half of the race as the quintet circulated together.
However, stalemate ruled and no position changes were forthcoming as the 11-lap event came to a breathless conclusion.
Lenz continued his remarkable run of being the only driver in the field to score points at every race so far in the 2018 FIA ETRC season.
Andre Kursim brought his Don’t Touch Racing IVECO home in eighth place to claim more points.
Brereton Takes Sunday GRAMMER Double Win
Shane Brereton maintained the GRAMMER TRUCK CUP lead despite his first lap travails through the gravel.
Oly Janes and Steffen Faas ran second and third for most of the race but Janes was forced to take a 30-second penalty for track limit violations and dropped to sixth in category.
Behind Faas, it was Luis Recuenco who claimed only his second podium of his truck racing career. It came despite a lurid moment at the first corner in his Trucksport Lutz Bernau MAN challenger.
Just behind the Spaniard was Jamie Anderson in fourth, while Jose-Eduardo Rodrigues took his best result of the weekend in fifth for Reboconort MAN.
With the penalised Janes sixth, it was the trio of Erwin Kleinnagelvoort (EK Race Scania), Frankie Vojtisek who was penalised for overspeeding at the start and observed a drive-through penalty, and the delayed T Sport MAN of British driver Terry Gibbon.
Vojtisek was later excluded from the race results for his part in a first lap incident.
In the battle for supremacy in the teams’ race it was Team Reinert Adventures which took the silverware ahead of Tankpool24 Racing and Die Bullen von IVECO Magirus.
The next round on the 2018 FIA ETRC schedule is at Circuit Zolder in Belgium over the weekend of 15/16 September.
Results HERE