Hungarian outfit Zengő Motorsport has confirmed a scaled-back two-car campaign for this year’s FIA World Touring Car Cup, retaining Rob Huff and reuniting with Dániel Nagy.
Huff, 42, joined the team for the 2021 season, but the Brit had a challenging season, with only one visit to the podium which came when he earned a victory in the very final race of the season in Sochi.
Nagy, 24, is returning to World Touring Cars for the first time since he contested the 2017 WTCC season with Zengő.
Since then, Nagy has primarily competed in TCR Europe, where he was a title contender in 2018, although last year he campaigned full-time in the inaugural all-electric PURE ETCR series with Zengő.
The confirmation of two cars represents a scaled-back effort from Zengő, after it had field four cars in 2021 for Huff, Mikel Azcona (who has left for Hyundai), Bence Boldizs and Jordi Gené (who is focussed on ETCR).
“I don’t want to say what we can achieve because we will see in the end of the season, but we are very confident with our two drivers, Rob Huff and Dani Nagy,” said Zengő Motorsport Team Principal Zoltán Zengő.
“We have the experience, talent and knowledge of Huffy and we know he can bring everything out of the car and everything out of himself.
“At the same time, he will motivate Dani and he will help him grow and help him find his precision on track. We believe this is a very good line-up to have a former champion and a young Hungarian talent in our team.
“We know we can focus on what we’ve been working on in the last years and we are going to work on showing and proving that what we did in Sochi was not an accident and we can do it again.
With two cars we can focus what we had for four cars on two cars and this should bring us more rewards.”
Huff returned to WTCR in 2021 after a season away racing in Scandinavia. Prior to the season finale, Huff had recorded a best finish of just eighth, and even though he won the finale he ended up 18th in the drivers’ standings, only above two other full-season entrants, team-mates Gené and Boldizs.
“There’s the age-old saying that you’re only good as your last race and we won both of them,” said Huff. “With Zengő we’re both old enough and wise enough with enough experience to know that it’s going to be a difficult start to the season because things have come together quite late on the surface, but there’s nothing that’s out of our reach.
“We’re confident with the car we have, we’re confident with the ability we have altogether and it’s our job to put everything we can into the first race and go from there and that’s what we intend to do.
“But the WTCR is a world series and we’re up against the best drivers and teams in the world on the most challenging circuits in the world.
“It’s never easy but between myself and the Zengő team we have full confidence in what we’re doing and we’re going to do everything we can to show that confidence on track.”
Although he has never completed a full WTCR season, Nagy did enter the 2018 Hungarian round as a wildcard entry, and he also contested a full season of World Touring Cars the previous year.
The Hungarian admitted that he did not expect to secure a WTCR drive for this season, either.
“I was waiting for a chance in the last couple of years to drive a full season in WTCR but it never came and when I thought there was not the chance to race this year I decided I would stop trying this year,” said Nagy.
“Then I got a phone call from a good friend, Zoltán Zengő, asking me if I would join his team and Rob Huff in trying to continue his dream of putting Hungarian engineers and young drivers to the top of the touring car field around the world and I said ‘yes’.
“Rob was always really nice to me even when I was a back runner in WTCC in an old car. He’s already helping me a lot and it’s a wonderful chance for me to learn from one of the biggest touring car legends.
“It means a lot to me and hopefully it will help me to continue my learning curve that we started a couple of years ago.
“My goal is to win at least one race but motorsport is not easy and for sure we’ll have to be careful in the beginning to get to know the car, the tyre and some of the race tracks.
“I want to have the feeling we have done everything possible.”