Every year Nürburgring race is a great event for truck racing fans. No other circuit can boast the attendance reaching as much as a quarter of a million of spectators, which surpasses even much more famous Formula 1 races. However, Nürburgring can be treacherous as well. A year ago the special climate in the area stopped the races on Sunday because of permanent thick fog. This year weather report was fortunately completely different.
Busy weekend agenda contained three days of races. First free practices were exceptionally scheduled already for Friday morning. David clearly displayed his excellent form and made a time 0.6 s faster than Gerd on second place. The success of Buggyra was finalized by Antonio on third place. In the second practice it was Gerd who was the fastest, followed this time by Lacko with Tatra, and David on third place.
The skies on Saturday were blue and sun was brightly shining on the results of Buggyra. Gerd won the warm-up and David the last free practice, making the track record at the same time. The afternoon with its high temperatures was very demanding for Buggyra pilots and their six competitors in the most powerful truck division. Timed practice of forty minutes has been certainly the most dramatic race in the series of this year. Till the last seconds the ranking was not clear. In the beginning David was in the lead, and was replaced by Gerd after several laps. In the middle of the race Antonio assumed the leading position. After pit stop David was able to beat him and shortly afterwards Gerd as well. However, the delegates deleted his time due to hitting the cones. Several minutes before the end Antonio made a record time. David tried to beat him but improved his time only to 0.3 s behind. During the last minute only Gerd was driving around and made the time only 0.002 s slower than David! Markus Östreich, leading by a single point only, contributed to the interesting development with his fourth time.
After the start Antonio very well used his best position and went to the lead, closely followed by David, who was very tactical giving neither Gerd nor Östreich any chance to overtake. The ranking was stabilized after the first technical part and the pilots continued in the order identical to the results from the practice. Till the middle of the race Gerd several times attempted to overtake David but the latter was all the time successful in keeping the ideal track. Later on he started to gain more and more ahead of Gerd, who on the contrary started to have some problems with approaching Östreich. In the end, however, nothing substantial occurred.
David was the best one at the start to the final race. Before the first turn he was able to get to the lead ahead of Antonio and Gerd. Substantially applauded by the spectators from full stands Gerd overtook Antonio in lap four. During the ten laps to go he very intensively tried to beat his younger team mate as well but got no chance. Much to the satisfaction of the team boss Martin Koloc, David did not make a single small mistake. It was starting to rain when he won the race, half a second ahead of Gerd. Antonio finished third and Lacko collected the points for fifth place.
At the evening ceremony Martin Koloc made a big surprise with a gift for David on the occasion of his first big victory. The gift consisted of a luxury Omega sport watch worth CZK 150 000 and a golden pendant with his personal escutcheon!
In total ranking Gerd got to the lead, David strengthened his third place ahead of Antonio and Lacko got closer to Luostarinen on fifth place.
