Christjohannes Schreiber wins ahead of local heroes in Hungary

Rikli Motorsport’s Christjohannes Schreiber won his second race in a row in the ETCC, leaping from third on the grid into the lead, but faced a late-race challenge from Zengõ’s Zsolt Szabo.

Szabo had started from pole position, but the Hungarian had a terrible start in his SEAT León and dropped to seventh, while the two Hondas of Christjohannes Schreiber and Peter Rikli leapt forward in their Honda Civics into first and second from third and seventh on the grid.

Rikli however didn’t finish the first lap in second, after the Zengõ SEAT of Norbert Nagy passed Rikli at Turn 13.

Zsolt Szabo was already making a fast recovery, passing Andreas Pfister’s SEAT for fourth at the end of lap two, and then overtaking Rikli’s Honda at Turn 5 on the third lap.

While Schreiber held a two-second lead over Nagy, Szabo caught and passed his team-mate on lap seven and then closed down on Schreiber, briefly passing the Swiss at Turn 13, although with light contact, falling back behind at the end of the lap.

Szabo made one final attempt to pass the Honda on the final lap, but lost the rear at Turn 5, losing time to the Civic, and had to settle for second.

Plamen Kralev had a busy race, with the Bulgarian given a driving standards warning for hitting both Szabo and the SEAT of Igor Stefanovski at the start of lap two at Turn 1.

The Audi driver would later go off at Turn 1 and hit the barrier, but would continue on, but his race ended on the final lap with a broken draftshift, while Andreas Pfister also retiring with a late race puncture on his SEAT.

Alexandr Artemyev had worked his way up to seventh after being stripped from pole, but after several track limits warnings were handed out, the Kazakh driver lost his position with a 30-second penalty, which promoted the two LEIN Racing SEATs of Fabio Mota and Mladen Lalusic behind, who will both start from the front row for Race 2.