Daniel Haglöf amazed with team’s performances to-date on WTCR debut

Daniel Haglöf followed up his team-mate Mikel Azcona’s Moroccan podium with one of his own in Race 2 at the Hungaroring, with the Swede briefly leading the field at the start of the wet-to-dry race in his PWR Racing Cupra. Haglöf has said he’s been stunned by the success of the team over the first two races in WTCR.

The Swedish driver qualified second on the grid for Race 2, and led the way into Turn 1, last two corners in the lead before he was passed by the Honda of Néstor Girolami, and then later pole-sitter Jean-Karl Vernay made his way back through in the WRT Audi.

Haglöf held on to finish third, with team-mate Azcona finishing fourth, marking the best combined result for the team so far in only two races.

The Swedish team now find themselves fourth in the teams’ standings, ahead of teams such as WRT, Comtoyou Racing, and Sébastien Loeb Racing in the standings.

“It’s really amazing. We started this journey back in 2012, and our first goal was to become the best team in Scandinavia, and now to take the leap out here and actually perform, it’s unreal,” said Haglöf.

“For me to be doing this well as a driver too. I’ve been working like hell to get this operation working, and it was always more important for me to grow the team, but now I’m driving on the world stage and I can actually hang with these guys, so it’s surreal.”

Haglöf believes the switch to the new Yokohoma tyre, based on the variant introduced for the Nurburgring last year has helped, as their rivals are also struggling to adjust their set-ups to work with the new rubber.

“What is new for everyone is the tyres, and I think it would be way more difficult for us if we didn’t have this new tyre,” he said. “It’s difficult enough to learn the tracks, but Mikel and I have really hit it off as team-mates, I really enjoy working with him, he has the same background, poor as hell and likes to drive cars.”

The team filed their entry at the last-minute after initially dropping their plan to enter after it seemed that Comtoyou Racing and Campos Racing would be the selected Cupra teams, but were able to benefit from Campos’ last-minute stand down, and admitted things might be even better if they’d had more time to prepare.

“I think it would have improved if we could have planned more,” he said to TouringCarTimes. “Everything isn’t quite as structured as we’d want it. Even though we didn’t have time to plan, some things you have to learn on site as well. I think the first year is just something that has to be done and I don’t think you can really achieve your best in your first year. I’m really happy we’re on this good a level, and hopefully we can establish ourselves in the championship, and more or more people are now talking about PWR Racing.”