Christian Lundgaard enjoyed a good day in the rain at the Hungaroring on Sunday as he clinched his second Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 series victory of the season to take the lead in the championship standings.
The MP Motorsport driver had earlier qualified on pole position for the fourteenth round of the season, and with the track completely wet for the start, he was able to convert that into a comfortable lead heading into turn one.
Thereafter, Lundgaard was in total control of proceedings, pulling clear of R-ace GP’s Max Fewtrell, who appeared not to have an answer to the pace of his fellow Renault Sport Academy rival.
The battle for the final podium spot was far more intense however, with five drivers fighting for position for much of the race. Alex Peroni made a good start to jump up to third, but with small damage to his front wing, he could not shake off the attention of Logan Sargeant, Oscar Piastri, Aleksandr Smolyar and Lorenzo Colombo.
JD Motorsport’s Colombo managed to make his way passed all four of his rivals to claim the final spot on the podium, with his move on Peroni particularly impressive as he swept around the outside of the MP Motorsport driver at the final turn.
Sargeant spun exiting turn four to drop to the back of the group, while Piastri also managed to work his way around Peroni to claim fourth, the Arden Motorsport driver repeating the trick that Colombo had pulled off a few laps before at the final turn.
The safety car was then deployed when Thomas Neubauer crashed his Tech 1 Racing machine exiting turn four, the same point that Sargeant had earlier spun, but whereas the R-ace GP driver was able to continue and finish seventh, the Tech 1 Racing ace hit the wall, his second crash in as many days after an early crash in race one on Saturday. The race ran out of time before the safety car could exit the track, allowing Lundgaard, Fewtrell and Colombo to finish on the podium.
Behind Sargeant was Fortec Motorsports’ Arthur Rougier in eighth and R-ace GP’s Victor Martins in ninth, while the final place inside the top ten went the way of Moroccan youngster Sami Taoufik of Arden Motorsport, who claimed his first point in the championship.
Pre-race championship leader and race one winner Yifei Ye suffered a bad start to his second race and dropped outside the points, and could only move back up to eleventh before the chequered flag fell, ensuring Lundgaard left Hungary as the new championship leader by eight points.
In the battle of the three Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup entries, victory went the way for the second day in a row to Anders Motorsport’s Doureid Ghattas, who claimed nineteenth overall, ahead of R-ace GP’s Gabriel Gandulia, with Anders Motorsport’s Phil Hill completing the podium in third.
There were a few spins during the race in the tricky conditions, including for Thomas Maxwell, Freek Schothorst and Neil Verhagen, but only Neubauer, Raul Guzman and Christian Munoz failed to see the chequered flag, the latter two seemingly with mechanical issues.
Hungaroring Race 2 Result
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