It was an amazing weekend for Dan Ticktum, who scored his first Formula Renault Eurocup win at the Hungaroring this weekend in just the 5th round of his Rookie season.
Running strong in collective tests on Friday, Dan proved right at the start of the weekend that the Hungaroring’s unique rhythm very much suited his driving style.
The first qualifying session of the weekend took place on Saturday in wet conditions and Dan found exceptional pace around the wet track taking his first pole position of the year.
Starting from pole in Race 1 on Saturday, Dan kept his cool and held off the attacks of Sacha Fenestraz and Gabriel Aubry on lap 1. He drove a fantastic race, defending the lead throughout two restarts following incident-triggered safety cars and battling with Fenestraz throughout the race to take his first win of the year and the first Rookie win of the year.
Qualifying 2 had taken place earlier in the day and with the track dry once more, Dan qualified P5 and P6 in his group for Race 2 and Race 3 respectively.
Starting P10 in Race 2 on Sunday morning, Dan had a clean start and kept up the pace to overtake Alexey Korneev on the inside on lap 2 to take P9 which he held until the end of the race.
Race 3 saw Dan start from P11 on the grid but he didn’t stay there for long, performing some greats moves on the outside of two cars at the first corner and inside another at turn two to make up three places in just the first lap. He finished the race in P8 but a penalty for Fenestraz saw Dan promoted to P7, taking home further valuable points; Dan is now in 6th position in the Championship and leading the Rookie Championship.
Dan Ticktum: “A very good weekend. I had my chances and took them. The win was the big thing of course but the points in the other two races were also very good. This is a very competitive series and not too many people score a win in their first year so that is fantastic and I couldn’t be happier.
“With Ben Salter and my engineer Matt Callaghan, we have worked every weekend to progress and reach our goals: to be the first member of the Red Bull Junior Team to win a race and to be the leading Rookie in the Championship. This weekend we accomplished that mission with the fastest race lap to boot!
For sure we can still improve and we are going to do that.”
The next round of the Formula Renault Eurocup will take place at the Nürburgring from 14 – 16 July.
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