Tamas Pal Kiss finished runner-up in Saturday’s opener at the Hungaroring moving up to second spot in the overall standings
Starting from the front row, the Hungarian outpaced polesetter Markus Pommer in the run up to the first corner and took the lead. Kiss held on to it until his obligatory pitstop and gradually moved up in the field again.
Towards the end of the race, he caught up with leader Kimiya Sato and eventually crossed the line less than a second behind the current championship top notch.
“The start was perfect and I could pull away from the field. However, then my tires got heavy graining, so I had to pit. But the stop went well and I could push hard afterwards. With one more lap, I maybe could have won the race,” Kiss was all smiles.
In the overall standings, local hero Kiss has overtaken Pommer and is now second, 22 points behind Sato.
„We had a great start, Tamas took the the lead straight away, but in lap 6 we started to have problems with oversteering and graining, so we had to bring the pitstop forward to stabilize the car again. Unfortunately for us, Sato also had a very good race. In the dying seconds, it wasn’t enough for the first place but 2nd is a great result”, team boss Michael Zele added.
Zele Racing team mate Yoshitaka Kuroda, who had to start from the bottom of the grid, showed highly improved form and finished 7th.
“I was very happy with the car and the tires today. I could attack right from the start and seventh place is an OK result considering I came all the way from the back”, the Japanese said.
Thus, Kuroda will start from the front row into Sunday’s race due to the reversed grid regulations of AutoGP.
AutoGP Hungary, Race 1 Results (selection)
1 Kimyia Sato, Euronova Racing
2 Tamas Pal Kiss, Zele Racing
3 Andrea Roda, Virtuosi UK
7 Yoshitaka Kuroda, Zele Racing
