I arrived at the second race weekend of the Swift Cup Europe championship as the championship leader, and we headed to a venue where I had already completed many successful races in the past. Salzburgring is not exactly my favourite track, but I still have plenty of good memories from here. Now, two gruelling races have been added to those memories.
The published entry list made me sad. The field consisted of only 10 cars, even though in the past this track had seen grids of nearly thirty cars. I hope this trend does not continue, and that one of Central Europe’s most important one-make championships becomes strong again.
For us, nothing changed, as essentially the front-runners of the championship all came to the Austrian round, so there was no room to relax. We had to push as hard as possible. Of course, financially we are not in a great position, so we only took part in one practice session and also had to save tyres, but the lap times were promising. I was the fastest in free practice.
In qualifying, I struggled to find the pace for a long time, but in the end I qualified in second place. However, my gap was almost half a second, which is huge. Still, on this track everything is about the slipstream, so I was not too worried about the deficit.
In the first race, I messed up the start. Not just a little — badly. From second place, I turned into the first corner in sixth. I tried to fight my way back, but the car was overheating and I had no straight-line speed. It was so bad that even in the slipstream of several cars, I was still losing ground.
There was not much I could do. I was hitting the steering wheel and fuming with frustration.
I did manage to get back up to third place, and in fact, on the final lap I could have even fought for the win, but there simply was not enough power in the car to properly get involved in the battle ahead of me.
In the second race, the start was once again not good, although I did not feel that I had made a mistake. Since we did not put on new tyres this time, that may also have played a part.
It took five minutes to climb up to second place, but from there, there was no way forward. The engine started to overheat, and I had to race with the heating turned up to maximum just to keep the car alive. I was taking the corners well and getting better exits, yet I was still falling behind.
On the straights, the others were driving past me and I dropped back as far as fourth place. I tried to make up time in the corners, but there are not many of them on this track. Essentially, there were only two major braking zones and corners where I could close in on the cars ahead.
The battle for third place was exciting. I had a close fight with Dániel Nemes, and in the end I managed to take back the final podium position.
With two third places, I dropped back to third in the championship, but my deficit is only four points, which is basically nothing.
However, since I will not be able to start at the Polish round, I am going to lose a lot of ground. The championship title is almost out of reach, but we already knew this at the beginning of the year. Whenever I get the chance to get back in the car, I will give everything and bring the maximum — but only if the car is good again. That is what we will be working on with the team.
Because you know me: I do not give up.
Thank you to everyone who helped me complete another race weekend!