Thiago Vivacqua took his maiden EuroFormula Open victory as part of a Campos Racing 1-2 at the Hungaroring, with the Brazilian making the most of a great start to take the win.
Vivacqua qualified third for Saturday’s opener behind team-mates Raoul Hyman and Simo Laaksonen, but the start made the race for the twenty-year-old, aggressively placing his car on the inside at turn one and forcing his way into the lead.
Vivacqua feels the result in Hungary was just reward for the efforts his Campos team have put in since the previous round in Paul Ricard, where the Brazilian’s best result was a seventh place finish.
“After the race at Paul Ricard, we went back to the base in Valencia and work hard day and night to fix the problems,” said Vivacqua on his official website. “But now we get to 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the classification and then managed to recover important points that escaped at Paul Ricard.
“As in Paul Ricard, I went with everything up at the start and this time it worked. I could go to the tip at the first corner. Sometimes it does not work, but this time it worked. And I think I managed to do a good race and maintain a good pace.”
Vivacqua was unable to make the same kind of gains at the start on Sunday, starting and finishing seventh, but the results in Hungary moved him up to fourth place in the championship standings, just twelve points behind Ameya Vaidyanathan in third.
“For today’s race it was not as favourable, starting from the fourth row is more difficult, as the track does not give so many conditions for overtaking,” said Vivacqua on Sunday.
“I still tried to gain some positions in the output, but had to hold to not get involved in any incident, just yet touching someone, or someone touched me and damaged the front wing a bit. But it was good, we score and continue the fight.”