Our team came to the Italian Grand Prix one truck stronger, with Adam Lacko behind its wheel. However, there was another addition to the roster, a duo of drivers of the Deutsche Post team. Its management had probably recognized that unimportant Super Truck category races, with the winner invariably placed last but one in the overall standings, would hardly attract even the most dedicated truck racing fans.
It was especially David who joined the weekend fights in an excellent manner, finishing just a thousandth of a second behind the surprising winner Markus Bösiger from Switzerland in Saturday's measured practice. Also encouraging was the opening result of Adam, who scored the sixth best time, which placed him in the third line of the roster. There was less satisfaction on the face of Gerd, who was beaten by eight drivers in the fight against time.
However, Gerd showed his qualities shortly after the start. Having put up with usual jostling, he weaved his way through the pack in a brilliant manner and entered the second lap in the sixth place, before Adam. David succeeded in defending his roster position and held the place behind Bösiger. Nevertheless, there was a fiercely fighting multicolored furball close behind, in which Adam's white Buggyra was gradually gaining a dominant position. The first man out was the aggressive Albacete from Spain, while Gerd started losing ground about halfway through the race, being visibly slowed down by a defective clutch. With three laps to the finish, David dropped to the third place behind Austrian driver Allgäuer, whom he immediately overtook again, but he was too wide in the next corner and lost two places as a result. At that time, Adam had drawn nearer to Allgäuer and was attacking the second place. However, his day was spoiled by a defect of his truck's brakes - still at full speed, Adam shot through a trap zone and hit a barrier. David won points for the fourth place in spite of problems with worn tires, Gerd finished in the eighth place, but he had to work very hard for it.
Gerd's place in the roster of the cup race remained empty, and there was also just one truck in the eleventh row. Because of the scope of defects and lack of time, Adam and Gerd had to put up with the role of spectators. They could watch a splendid, tight race, in which only Saturday's sovereign Bösiger developed a tiny lead, but three drivers, Allgäuer, Vojtíšek and Vršecký, were circling in a train-like fashion throughout the thirteen laps and arrived bumper to bumper to the finish line. However, FIA stewards noticed some illegal maneuvers of Vojtíšek and added a ten-second penalty to his time. Thus, it was David who climbed to the podium to collect a cup and a laurel wreath, pleasing both himself and his team.
Sunday's qualification meant a lot of hard work for our drivers, as they had not been overly successful in the previous practice and started at the seventh to ninth places in the roster. However, they coped very well with traditional jostling in the first few corners and reached the finish line of the second lap in the fifth to seventh places. Step by step, they were chewing away at Östreich's lead in the fourth place, but they would have needed two more laps to actually overtake him. Moreover, Adam's engine was losing power toward the end of the race, and David and Gerd thus overtook him literally at the finish line, finishing fith and sixth, respectively. Still, Adam deserves a commendation for his brave performance, and he also scored his first cup points for his excellent driving.
The cup race went well for Gerd, who swiftly made his way to the fourth place and was attacking Bösiger in the third place for several laps. For the second time in the season, he lost a place on the podium by a hairbreadth. Compared to the qualification race, Adam finished two places up after delivering a brilliant performance, while David dropped two places down, although his pass across the finish line side by side with Östreich in the sixth place was the closest of all the four races on the Santamonica circuit.
