High hopes at Helmia

Last weekend’s Austrian event turned into a nightmare for Helmia Motorsport, but the Renault team has regrouped this week and is present at Nyirad for the Hungarian event and aiming to have both of its Clio Supercars in the A final.

For team boss Stig-Olov Walfridson the problems that brought his Austrian event to an early end really started when he crashed out of the finals in France. “There was a lot of damage after the crash and we had to work hard to get the car ready to Austria, everything seemed okay with the engine but after scrutineering in Austria there was a water leak so we had to change the engine,” he explained. Then, in Sunday’s second heat in Austria the spare engine failed, leaving the Swede with no option but to throw in the towel which, having been fifth fastest in the first heat was a bitter disappointment.

The team’s woes were compounded when Mats Lysen was disqualified from the first heat after scrutineers judged the rear wing of his Clio to be too high – allegedly by 0.8mm. Second fastest time in the second heat on Sunday morning had Lysen back on track for the finals, but the third heat brought disaster when he crashed out.

“The last two events have been bad,” said Norwegian referring to his failure to make it to the finals in France, “I was very disappointed last week because it was just a small push that put me off the track and usually a spin like that would not be a problem but I hit the wall and it damaged the car and then I had to stop. It’s not good for me but things like that happen in racing and I can only look ahead. We did a lot of work on the car after the weekend and I did some laps on the asphalt part of the track at Greinbach on Thursday before we came here, the car felt really good so I hope that I can get back to how thigs were at the start of the year,” said Lysen who finished second in the season opener at Lydden.

Walfridson too has high hopes for the Hungarian event, “I love this track,” he said of the challenging Nyirad circuit, “We had a bad event last week but I have a fresh engine in the car now and I hope we can get both cars in the A final here.”

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