It was a great journey to Budapest for Romeo Ferraris in the second round of the 2022 FIA ETCR eTouring Car World Cup the Italian manufacturer collected 155 points for the Teams’ rankings, bouncing back from their unfortunate season-opener at Pau.
Maxime Martin finished on the third step of the podium at the end of the weekend, thanks to a win in his pool’s DHL Super Final. Maxime accumulated 78 points – just one more than team-mate Bruno Spengler, who ran in the FURIOUS pool.
Fifth in qualifying, Martin began his climb by winning Quarter Final 2, earning his position in Semi Final 1, where he finished in second position. Maxime got the best of the final heat thanks to an excellent start, while team-mate Giovanni Venturini finished third in Quarter Final 2 with two Romeo Ferraris, then imposed himself in Semi Final 2.
“Awesome to win the final, after a bad qualifying at the beginning of the weekend we came back every time until winning the final.,” said Martin. “I’m very happy for the team. The work they did, as we had some technical issues out of our control, has been paid off. That’s a victory for the team.”
Venturini was happy too. “Good points for the team, for the championship and for me too,” he said. “We did a mega start, it was a good fight with Ekström. P1 and P3 for the team in the final is good so looking forward to Jarama in less than one week.”
Spengler, in Pool FURIOUS, qualified second with a time of 1m 54.906s, to then win both Quarter Final 1 and Semi Final 1, to then do battle at the top of his DHL Super Final, where he crossed the finish line in third position.
“It was a good fight in the end,” said Spengler. “The CUPRA has more pace. It was a good battle with Tom, but I think Adrien was a little bit quicker and I tried to fight as much as I could. In the end it’s P3, which is good as well for the rest of the championship. We won two battles, scored points for the whole weekend, did good qualy as well a good improvement from Pau to here, so hopefully we can take the momentum and I’m very thankful for the work of the team the whole weekend.
Luca Filippi once more had contact with Hyundai Motorsport N’s Jean-Karl Vernay and subsequently at a reduced pace managed to stay on track and reach the chequered flag, seizing fifth position and the corresponding points for the drivers’ classification.
“My Final was over as soon as contact happened,” said Filippi. “I was saving Power Ups, I don’t know where I could have finished but somewhere around Bruno and I think we could have been in the battle with Tom. I had to face another avoidable incident with Vernay unfortunately, which is really frustrating in my opinion, costing points both me and him.”
Thanks to the results at the Hungaroring, Romeo Ferraris sits second in the team championship with 272 points. Among the drivers, Spengler climbs fourth to 138, while Martin advances to 134, Venturini to 85 and Filippi to 50.
“Here in Budapest we were not the winners, but we can be satisfied thanks to a weekend with a more linear trend than in Pau,” said Romeo Ferraris Team Principal, Michela Cerruti.
“Also for this reason, we were able to really show the level of competitiveness of the Giulia ETCR and our drivers. Maxime went on to win the DHL Super Final of the Fast pool, even if starting from a non-optimal qualifying position, but also Bruno and Giovanni had the satisfaction of winning heats.
“Luca would have deserved more, but it was again unfortunate to be involved in a collision in the final. The Jarama round is already around the corner, because we will be back to racing next weekend, but we hope to be able to repair the damage to the car thanks to the efforts of our talented mechanics. In the meantime, we have a few days to analyze the data and work to present ourselves even stronger in Spain.”
