Mat’o Homola was ‘speechless’ after winning the opening TCR Europe race at the Hungaroring, holding off Target Competition team-mate Josh Files for a lights-to-flag victory.
Homola led a Hyundai 1-2-3 on the opening race of the season, driving a near-flawless race to take his first win in the European TCR series at the first time of asking.
The Slovak driver had to defend at the start, with Files moving up to second after the first sequence of corners, before opening up a slight margin in the first half of the race.
However Files began to come back at Homola towards the end of the race, although the 24-year-old had just enough pace in reserve to fend off the challenge.
“It’s perfect, I’m speechless,” said Homola. “The key was the good start, I think. I didn’t practice at all before this race, so I was a little afraid, but I had some very good advice about the theoretical parts. I was able to make a good start and then I could try and control the race.
“I could see behind me that there were several battles. Files was very fast and also the Peugeot [of Julien Briché], but I was concentrating on my driving and not making any mistakes; I made two really small mistakes and Files was immediately right behind me.
“This was the perfect result for the team and the perfect result for Hyundai. Let’s try to finish the work today and get some more good points in race two.”
Race two gets underway at 14:30 CEST (13:30 BST).