A moment of shock for Steffi Halm

At the 4^th run of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship, on the Red Bull Ring in Austria, the Lion Truck Racing team presented itself to 26,000 spectators with the Belgian driver Jean-Pierre Blaise as team partner of the regular pilot Steffi Halm from Germany. This season, Blaise “shares” the Lion MAN with the number 20 with his Spanish teammate Javier Mariezcurrena.

On Saturday morning, Steffi Halm went through a moment of shock as her race truck came off the track at a high speed, overran a tyre barrier and was finally stopped by a crash barrier.

With an unbelievable effort, the Lion mechanics, all together, actually managed to repair the truck and to get it ready to start just on time for the second race of the day!

Switching to the Lion-MAN worked out surprisingly well for the Belgian who drove for his own team throughout the last years, he achieved the 13^th rank right way!

At the second race then, his teammate Steffi Halm, being back on track, supported Blaise. However, the young pilot had to start from the end of the field consisting of 21 trucks. Despite the few overtaking opportunities on the Grand Prix circuit, she managed to level up to rank 16.

Blaise achieved an extremely great start and even got hold of the 9^th position for a while. At the end and after a tough battle, he had to stick to rank 13 though.

On Sunday Steffi achieved twice rank 10 with her MAN and earned important points!

This race day worked out definitely better than the day before. The overall standings shows that Steffi is still on 9^th position!

Jean-Pierre Blaise had already fought himself up to rank 11 when he was given a drive-through penalty. Consequently, he fell back to the 14^th rank.

At the final race Blaise finished the race close behind Steffi, ranking 12^th.

For his good overall performance throughout the weekend, the Belgian pilot was awarded the second rank on the podium of the TRO challenge!

Leaving Spielberg, the team will directly head to Germany for the Lion Truck Racing team to participate at a 3-day event organized by ZF. Afterwards, the team will take part in the truck-racing highlight of the year, the Truck Grand Prix on Nürburgring.

  back