After an almost two-month's break, best truckers of the Old Continent came together for the second event on the Santamonica Circuit at Misano in Italy, which is not far from the seaside resort of Rimini. Both our drivers came to Misano as great favourites - after the first event in Barcelona, David Vršecký dominated the field along with Albacete, a Spanish driver, and Gerd Körber was just behind them loosing only a few of points.
Even first free practices indicated that life is not all beer and skittles. In particular, David had troubles with brakes on this left-hand circuit and was losing valuable tenths of seconds behind his rivals. At high noon, a real race against time began. Surprisingly, Östreich, a German driver reached the fastest lap ahead of his fellow countryman Hahn, and Albacete. Gerd's time was good only for fourth place at the starting grid of the qualification race, and David was fifth just behind him.
Hahn succeeded to start off as the best and held his leading all the first lap ahead of Albacete and Gerd. Unlike Gerd, David changed his place for the worse by one and was sixth behind Östreich and Garrett. The top placing changed right away in the second lap, where Albacete pulled ahead of Hahn, and soon Gerd overtook Hahn as well. The only important change in top positions was that David succeeded to get fifth in the third lap ahead of Garrett. The leading five whirled around the circuit for remaining two-thirds of this race without any severe attacks and the only changes in placement were far behind their backs.
David had an unlucky start into the main race. He got into huge havoc, he drove from one track-side to another, got a big hit, and finally he ended with his immobile truck far in the emergency zone at barriers. His path to get further cup points was stopped by a burst hose supplying air to brakes. Gerd hold safely his third place behind Albacete and Hahn in all thirteen laps, however in final laps he had to beat back the attack of hard running Östreich.
The Timed Practice on Sunday was very close, where Hahn won ahead of Albacete and Gerd. David was sixth, but he was only 16 second hundredth behind Gerd and he lost his fight for the fifth place with the Swiss Bösiger just by one thousandth! Also the Qualification Race start was scarred by several collisions, where not only David suffered from them, but also and mainly Gerd. In the first lap, he even fell to the eleventh place, however, in two laps only, he succeeded to get just behind seventh David. After three laps both our drivers exchanged their respective places, because David could not get all wheels moving at full blast, because he almost could not see through his windscreen. The thing was that it rather looked like a huge spider-web then a screen as a result of colliding with a fender, which flew off of Lacko's truck. In spite of this handicap, David hung on Gerd as his shadow and they together started to chase Lacko and Garrett. In the final lap, Lacko smashed his truck into Garrett and they both ran off the track. Both Buggyras took this chance and easily squeezed to their fifth-place and sixth-place finishes respectively.
The many-colored field started much more peacefully into the Cup Race, almost without any crackups. At the beginning, Gerd was fourth behind Albacete, Hahn, and Vojtíšek. David was fifth closely followed by Lacko. This top-six ranking lasted four laps, then Gerd arranged the change, when he overtook Vojtíšek. David performed the same maneuver two laps after. Both, Gerd and David, began to wide the gap, but they were not able to catch up with well running Hahn and Albacete. Definitely, they showed an excellent performance, where only a better starting position lacked to sheer perfection.
They can try to get it right in less than a week, as the third event will be on the next weekend at the Spanish circuit at Albacete. As chance would have it, Antonio Albacete, a domestic driver will present himself in the role of the leader of 2006 European Truck Racing Cup. Hahn got on the second place, and Gerd is only one point behind him. David is fourth having ten points less than Gerd; when David is twenty points ahead of Östreich, who is on the fifth place.
