Highs and lows at Hungaroring
A tricky weekend at the fourth round of the 2021 PURE ETCR season saw our team claim victories but endure more disappointment at the Hungaroring.
“While we made a good start to the weekend, ultimately we feel we haven’t unlocked our full performance at the Hungaroring,” said our Director of Marketing and PR, Stefan Ph. Henrich. “Now we must focus on maximising our performance for the final round of the season, where we will be targeting our first overall victory in PURE ETCR.”
Starting off on the right foot
Augusto made a perfect start with an early victory in his first Battle, but was handed a penalty after his second Battle win that deducted six points from his weekend total.
Following the Pool A time trial, our team discovered a technical fault that required a component change in the powertrain of his Veloster N ETCR. Despite the best efforts of our team and technical partners, the issue was unable to be resolved in time for Augusto take part in his Super Final.
“It is difficult to summarise my weekend at the Hungaroring,” said Augusto. “The team did an incredible job to try and fix the issue we found, but we were unable to get the car ready for my final race.”
His team-mate John made a gutsy door-to-door move in Round 2 to take the lead of his head-to-head Battle, and went on to take an emphatic victory. Sunday proved to be more difficult for the Frenchman, who finished fifth in the final two Rounds.
“I pushed myself in the Battle Rounds and had a good Saturday,” said John. “On Sunday I didn’t have the same pace and it was tricky to fight in the Super Final.”
Title fight continues
Jean-Karl’s busy weekend on double racing duties began with second place in Round 1 and a comfortable victory in Race 2. However, our French driver was deemed to have exceeded track limits, and he was demoted to second.
Our team was able to finish repairing the problem on his Veloster N ETCR just moments before the final race. Jean-Karl briefly powered into the lead of the Super Final, but elected to bring the car home safely in second. As a result, he remains firmly in contention for the 2021 PURE ETCR title.
“We were expecting to be strong in the Battles but our Pool was quite tough,” he admitted. “The positive thing is we are still second in the drivers’ championship.”
In his Round 1 Battle, Tom consistently applied pressure to the second-place car during the short race, but he had to settle for third. He missed out on a win in his closely-fought head-to-head Round 2 on Saturday. After his qualifying lap, Tom was given a penalty for track limits which dropped him to fourth for the Super Final grid. He was firmly in the mix in the final race, swapping positions several times, and crossed the finish line in fifth.
“This weekend has been really frustrating; I came here with high hopes as I love this circuit,” said Tom. “Sadly as the weekend progressed and the track got more grip, we seemed to go slower and I was unable to get a win.”
