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HUNGARORING RACE 2 – PENTUS 18th, 16th, 13th, 9th, 5th, 16th

This was the story of Sten Pentus second race in Hungaroring today, in a race interrupted by multiple Safety Cars, yellow flags and pit stops.

Starting 18^th Sten made an excellent start and immediately made two positions in the first three corners, before a major accident between Adrian Zaugg and Chris van der Drift triggered the Safety Car, by which time Sten had moved up to fourteenth.

With racing resumed Sten made further places to move into twelfth place and very soon became fifth as a number of cars pitted for the mandatory tyre change. Sten’s strategy was to run longer than the cars around him to make use of clear track. This strategy was working to perfection until just before he planned to pit for tyres, when another accident brought out the Safety Car again which ruined Sten’s race. For the sake of 30 seconds all the hard work and strategising was lost as he was forced to wait until racing resumed before he could pit.  All the drivers who had pitted prior to the second Safety Car immediately recovered lost ground as the field lined up directly behind each other, so that any time deficit was immediately erased. The end result was that when Sten finally did pit he lost track position to cars he had passed earlier and who pitted earlier.

Despite this problem and the end result, Sten had a great race, “I really enjoyed the race today because there were lots of battles and I learned more again about how to drive the World Series. It was a pity that our strategy was destroyed by the Safety Car, but that is the way it goes. Sometimes it works for you, some times it works against you.”

Mofazfortec team-mate Fairuz Fauzy had another good race and finally finished seventh, despite setting fastest lap, and although he pitted before the second Safety Car, he also lost out to the cars who had pitted earlier.

Hungaroring lived up to its reputation of being challenging and difficult to learn, but by the end of the weekend, Sten’s lap times were very close to matching Fauzy, and the weekend has added greatly to Sten’s experience.