Atmospheric Hungaroring all set to welcome the new generation WTCC

This weekend the third round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship takes place at the Hungaroring circuit just outside of Budapest, and a capacity crowd is expected to be there, all hoping that Citroën’s winning run will come to an end in favour of Honda driver Norbert Michelisz.

Citroën have dominated the Championship from the start, with pole position in Marrakech and Paul Ricard, and with 1-2 finishes all in four races.

José María López leads the points in his first full season in the WTCC, and currently has an enviable 50% start to victory ratio, taking into account the results from his one-off appearance at Termas de Río Hondo last season with the Wiechers-Sport BMW.

His Citroën Total WTCC team-mate Sébastien Loeb has also impressed, taking victory in his second career race at Marrakech, and briefly holding pole position for his home race at Paul Ricard until the car was excluded later that evening due to a malfunctioning safety system. While some may have expected it would take some time for Loeb to get used to the ways of pack racing in touring cars, he showed a knack for it in France, working his way forward from the final row of the grid in both races with some good, close racing, with some occasional, well within standards, contact.

Citroën’s Yvan Muller’s points position is probably the most unrepresentative of the four-time champion’s pace so far. The Frenchman’s only weakness would appear to be his one-lap pace in the new Q3 format, making a mistake in Marrakech which saw him qualify fourth, and another one at Paul Ricard which eventually didn’t make any difference after his team-mates’ exclusion.

Muller’s points deficit is mostly a matter of ‘wrong place, wrong time’, as the Citroën on point in race two, he was the one that came across the spinning Chevrolet of Tom Coronel and was taken out of the race, losing 25 points to Loeb and 18 to López, when theoretically he would have closed in by ten points to López in the standings with a likely victory.

Spinning Chevrolets also robbed Yvan of the chance to take the double at home, with Gianni Morbidelli’s Münnich Motorsport car knocked around at Turn 2, forcing Muller into avoiding action and allowing ‘Pechito’ López through and to be the leading Citroën that went on to take the French manufacturer’s fourth win from four races. As a result, Muller sits third in the Championship standings when he could theoretically be leading them.

This weekend, compensation weight also comes into effect which sees Lada, Honda and Chevrolet able to remove 60kg of ballast from their cars. Although Citroën’s pace has been over 1.5 seconds faster than the other teams, so it’s unlikely that 60kg of ballast will make up such a big difference in performance, it’s likely to play a key role in the reverse grid second race, as with the other three manufacturers now at just 1,100kg, they’ll wear their tyres out much more slowly during the race and have better acceleration out of the corners and down the straights than they have had before, which is where the Citroën C-Elysée WTCCs have been breezing past them in the first two races.

With a pair of podiums at Paul Ricard, Honda will be hoping to be able to convert race two to victory. The team gambled by targeting a reverse grid pole for Tiago Monteiro and a good race one position for Gabriele Tarquini at Paul Ricard, which gave each driver a third place finish at the French circuit, while the crowd’s focus will very much be on the black and red Zengõ Motorsport Honda Civic of Norbert Michelisz, who took an emphatic victory in front of his home crowd at the circuit two years ago in the BMW 320 TC, and the crowd will very much be hoping for a repeat in his second year with Honda.

This weekend there will also be another Honda on the grid, with NIKA Racing joining the Championship in the TC2T class with Yukinori Taniguchi. The Japanese driver won the Asia Trophy last season, driving for different teams in all three events, the last of which was with NIKA Racing. The Swedish team are in a holding pattern for this year, competing in TC2T with the Civic test car, used by Tiago Monteiro in 2012 and by Takuya Izawa at Suzuka last season, before upgrading to a TC1 class car for the 2015 season, with Rickard Rydell rejoining the Championship for the first time full-time since 2009.

This increases the TC2T entry to four cars, however so far Liqui Moly Team Engstler’s Franz Engstler has been undefeated, using the BMW 320 TC run by ROAL Motorsport last season to great effect.

“I’ve already driven a bit on this circuit: in an F3000 a few years back, and last summer in the Citroën C-Elysée WTCC, at the very start of the car’s development,” said Sébastien Loeb. “It’s quite narrow, with a lot of technically demanding sequences. I think it’s quite a nice circuit, but I don’t know if there will be a lot of overtaking opportunities.”

Honda driver Tiago Monteiro’s expectations are ‘Citroënesque’ in their conservative nature, regardless of the weight break handed to the Japanese marque this weekend.

“The team has made some changes to the Civic, which we believe should enable us to reduce the gap that separates us from our rivals,” said Monteiro. “But it will still be a complicated round because our rivals have tested on this circuit over the winter and they know it well.”

2014 FIA WTCC Race of Hungary Entry List

No – Driver – Team Name – Car – Class
1 – Yvan Muller – Citroën Total WTCC- Citroën C-Elysée – TC1
2 – Gabriele Tarquini – Castrol Honda WTC Team – Honda Civic WTCC – TC1
3 – Tom Chilton – ROAL Motorsport – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
4 – Tom Coronel – ROAL Motorsport – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
5 – Norbert Michelisz – Zengõ Motorsport – Honda Civic WTCC – TC1
6 – Franz Engstler – Liqui Moly Team Engstler – BMW 320 TC – TC2T
7 – Hugo Valente – Campos Racing – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
8 – Pasquale Di Sabatino – Liqui Moly Team Engstler – BMW 320 TC – TC2T
9 – Sébastien Loeb – Citroën Total WTCC- Citroën C-Elysée – TC1
10 – Gianni Morbidelli – ALL-INKL Münnich Motorsport – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
11 – James Thompson – LADA Sport Lukoil – Lada Granta Sport – TC1
12 – Rob Huff – LADA Sport Lukoil – Lada Granta Sport – TC1
14 – Mikhail Kozlovskiy – LADA Sport Lukoil – Lada Granta Sport – TC1
18 – Tiago Monteiro – Castrol Honda WTC Team – Honda Civic WTCC – TC1
25 – Mehdi Bennani – Proteam Racing – Honda Civic WTCC – TC1
27 – John Filippi – Campos Racing – SEAT León WTCC – TC2T
37 – José María López – Citroën Total WTCC – Citroën C-Elysée – TC1
77 – René Münnich – ALL-INKL Münnich Motorsport – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
98 – Dušan Borković – Campos Racing – Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – TC1
99 – Yukinori Tanicguchi – NIKA Racing – Honda Civic WTCC – TC2T

2014 FIA WTCC Race of Hungary Timetable

Friday 2nd May
12:30 – Testing

Saturday 3rd May
09:00 – Free Practice 1
12:00 – Free Practice 2
14:30 – Qualifying

Sunday 4th May
13:30 – Race 1 (14 Laps)
14:40 – Race 2 (14 Laps)

All times are CET. For BST, – 1 Hour

2014 FIA WTCC Race of Hungary Compensation Weight

Car – Ballast – Final Weight
Citroën C-Elysée – +60kg – 1,160kg
Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 – 0kg – 1,100kg
Honda Civic WTCC – 0kg – 1,100kg
Lada Granta Sport – 0kg – 1,100kg