Jean-Karl Vernay has hailed the ‘fantastic’ job done by his WRT Leopard Racing team to rebuild his Volkswagen Golf GTi car and prepare a new chassis for Rob Huff for this weekend’s TCR International Series races at the Hungaroring.
The team had a huge task after last weekend’s races at the Sazlburgring to repair Vernay’s car, after two separate high-speed shunts for Vernay and team-mate Rob Huff.
The Belgian team rented a ramshackle barn near Budapest in order to carry out the repairs to the cars in the run-up to this weekend’s event, and have managed to complete the job to allow both drivers to continue their campaigns.
Vernay completed just three shakedown laps in Friday’s first practice session, before proving the pace of his repaired car in second practice to go second fastest, less than a second behind pace-setter Norbert Michelisz.
“It’s an unbelievable result, given the week we had to endure,” said Vernay. “The guys have worked day and night the entire week to get the two cars ready, they really did a fantastic job.
“I am almost sure that if it wasn’t for this team, we couldn’t be racing this weekend. I am really grateful to all of them.”
Vernay believes the team are now in a good position at a circuit which he enjoys racing on due to it’s flowing and twisty nature.
“This is a circuit I like, which requires very smooth driving. Yesterday, we only did a shake down to check that everything was ok, so to be that competitive today is great.
“We still have to improve a number of things in the set-up, but we are starting from a good base.”
Qualifying takes place at 16:50 CEST (15:50 BST).