Racer Michelisz wants “100 times” more rallies after scoring ERC points on debut

Hungary’s best racing driver, and the winner of the 2019 FIA World Touring Car Cup, drove a Hankook-equipped Hyundai i20 N Rally2 to 13th overall on his first rally. He’d been on the fringes of the top 10 when he was forced to stop to change a damaged tyre on the penultimate stage of leg one.  

The 39-year-old, who heads the TCR World Tour standings with three events remaining, now wants to put into practice all he learned on Rally Hungary as soon as the opportunity arises.

“I would do this again 100 times but from this moment I need to focus on my championship [in touring cars] so let’s wait and see,” ‘Norbi’ said. “I enjoyed it a lot because of all the new things I experienced. There were so many unknowns and I was not looking at any stage times until [the final] morning.

“In the end we managed to follow the strategy, which was to take it easy, especially in the beginning. Then, as soon as I was able to build the confidence, I tried to increase the speed. To see the finish was a big, big achievement because it was a tough rally. I’m quite happy with the performance as well, towards the end we were not so far off the pace. I’m thankful to my team and all the guys because the car was working great.”

New for Norbi  

Pacenotes: With Rally Hungary marking his debut in the sport, having a co-driver delivering rapid-fire pacenotes represented a significant change: “Róbert [Tagai], my co-driver, was helping me a lot all the way. When we did the first test I was in panic because I thought it was going to be much easier. In the slow corners it’s no problem because you have all the time to digest [the information] but every time you arrive to the fourth or fifth gear corners, I really needed to trust my eyes and instinct.”  

Precision: “I was thinking about this rally for one month, not sleeping, always thinking what the plan should be. In the end my main target was to survive the Saturday morning loop. Rallying is completely different to racing. On these narrow forest roads there is no margin for error. I always try to go further to explore the limits and you feel like there is one step more, one step more until you realise the point that it wasn’t and then you are out so it’s a very fine line. For me the biggest difficulty is to manage the risk without going off the road because on the circuit you see the run-off zones next to the corners. Most of the time on a permanent circuit you have the room if you make an error. In rallying you do not.”  

‘Pitstops’: Michelisz was in 11th overall starting SS7 but had to pull over to change a left-rear wheel. “I couldn’t just drive into the pits like normally so I had to do the work myself and you can see looking at my fingers that I look like a guy who’s been working, before I looked like a guy who’s been playing piano! We practiced the tyre change, I don’t want to say we did it in a good time but from the moment we realised there was a puncture I knew the time loss was going to be huge. From that moment we needed to reset the target and from that moment the target was even more to finish the rally.”