14 POLES FOR KISS IN 2024
In spectacular form, Norbert Kiss has taken a clean sweep of pole positions in 2024, claiming all 14 poles from the season’s qualifying sessions.
Once again, the reigning champion was in a league of his own, finishing just under a second ahead of second-placed Jochen Hahn. Remarkably, Kiss completed only one flying lap in Q3, while his competitors managed two, yet it was enough to comfortably secure the final pole of the season.
Sascha Lenz will start just behind Kiss and Hahn, alongside Steffi Halm in fourth—her best qualifying result of the season. Q3 was exclusively made up of Titan drivers, with Antonio Albacete and André Kursim (in his final qualifying for Don’t Touch Racing) rounding out the top six.
José Eduardo Rodrigues narrowly missed out on Q3 by just one hundredth of a second to Kursim, but took another Chrome pole position. He will start P6 overall, however, as Albacete has a two-place grid penalty from Race 2 and drops to P7, splitting the Chrome top two. Mark Taylor will line up beside him in P8, second in Chrome. Taylor’s qualifying was crucial, as outscoring Steffen Faas by three points in Race 3 will confirm his second place in the Chrome championship.
Faas struggled in comparison, setting only a 2:00.193, putting him 12th overall and sixth in Chrome. If positions remain unchanged in Race 3, Taylor will have enough points to secure second in class.
Bradley Smith had one of his best qualifying sessions of the season, at one point appearing set to be second fastest in Chrome. He ended up P9 overall and third in class, starting alongside Luis Recuenco and ahead of John Newell and Faas.
Clemens Hecker faced a close call with a lap time deletion that nearly relegated him to the back of the grid, but he managed to set another lap before the end of Q1. His 2:00.910 was identical to Faas’ Q1 time, but as Faas set the time first, he advanced to Q2.
Hecker’s performance was particularly impressive given the morning’s events when he went off track and through the barrier at the penultimate corner during warm-up, damaging his truck. Hecker walked away completely fine. The German was able to participate in qualifying thanks to the entire OneTruckFamily’s efforts to get his cab race-ready.
Luke Garrett wasn’t as fortunate. He failed to set a lap time after his rose spring snapped coming out of the pits and into Turn 3. Garrett has been plagued by steering issues all season, and just as the team thought they had resolved the problem, this latest setback dealt a blow to their hopes of finishing the season on a high. If repairs are made in time, they will need to apply to the stewards to start from the back of the grid, or else face a pit lane start.
Jonathan André, Simon Faulkner, and Craig Reid complete the grid, starting P14, P15, and P16, respectively.
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