Photo: TCR

Mat’o Homola romps to victory in the first race of the season in Hungary

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Mat’o Homola led a Target Competion Hyundai 1-2 in the first race of the 2019 TCR Europe Touring Car Series, leading team-mate Josh Files across the line to score the first win, with Nelson Panciatici finishing third for M Racing, making it a Hyundai 1-2-3.

Homola made the perfect start from pole position, while team-mate Andreas Bäckman ran into trouble at Turn 2 and ran out wide, sliding down to 16th position by the end of the first lap, with Files up to second ahead of Julien Briché’s JSB Competition Peugeot 308TCR.

There was trouble further in the pack at the start, as Maxime Potty’s WRT Volkswagen collected the rear of Natan Bihel’s M Racing Hyundai, with the two cars retiring with damage.

The race soon got worse for WRT, with the Audi of Santiago Urrutia off at Turn 3 with contact.

Aurélien Comte was running in fifth in the DG Sport Competition Peugeot, but the Frenchman was passed by the Target Competition Hyundai of Dusan Borkovic at the start of lap five. The Serbian made his move at Turn 1, but Comte grabbed the spot back at Turn 2, but Borkovic was able to complete the manoeuvre at Turn 3.

Comte would then lose two more spots to both the M1RA Hyundai of Daniel Nagy and to the Comtoyou Racing Audi of Gilles Magnus a lap later.

Nelson Panciatici passed the Peugeot of Julien Briché at the final corner on lap eight to grab the final podium spot, while at the same time further down the order, Target driver Jessica Bäckman wrestled her Hyundai into the top ten, passing the BRC Hyundai of Luca Filippi.

Homola went on to win the race by four-tenths of a second over Files, with Panciatici a further second behind.

Luca Engstler, starting from 37th and last in the repaired M1RA Hyundai, had a lightning fast first lap to pass 14 cars to move up to 23rd, and worked his way up to 19th by the finish, but stil four places outside of the points.

The second race starts at 14:30 CEST, with Santiago Urrutia due to start from pole in the WRT Audi RS 3 LMS.