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The 2015 Hankook RCM Cup season visits one of the favorite tracks of the Hungarian drivers this weekend, the Pannóniaring near the beautiful city of Sárvár. A good indication of the popularity of this circuit is the number of former one-make series frontrunners, who decided to make a quest start at the fourth round of the championship.

One of the most prominent drivers to make his season debut is Zoltán Bárkovics, a former Hungarian Suzuki Swift champion, who was crowned in 2011 after beating Áron Tőzsér and Roland Farkas in the overall with RCM Motorsport. However it has been a time since Bárkó last raced a full season; his last complete campaign was in 2013 when he finished third trailing Dániel Nagy and Attila Tassi after missing the second round is Salzburg. Since than he only entered on weekend; he made a quest start last year at the RCM Cup season finale. Bárkovics has valuable experience at the Pannoniaring; he went on winning race one two years ago.

Bálint Hatvani has even nicer memories from the Western-Hungarian track. The former rival of such Hungarian stalwarts as Norbert Michelisz, Gábor Wéber and Norbert Kiss competed a full season in RCM Cup last year and managed to conclude the Pannoniaring event with a stunning double victory, which guaranteed a tight title battle for the second part of the season. Since then Hatvani worked for RCM Motorsport as a race engineer in their campaign on the 24h Series Endurance World Cup, but decided to return to Zsille Motorsport for the weekend, just like Bárkovics.

The third returnee is the team boss of RCM Motorsport, and the WTCC co-commentator at Eurosport Hungary; László Csuti, who finished fifth in the championship last year. In 2015 he decided to concentrate on his duties as an organizer and also on the above mentioned endurance program, but he could not deny the call of the Pannóniaring. However, as all seats are filled at his own team the RCM Motorsport chief had to find a place somewhere else and finally teamed up with CarColor Motorsport for the weekend. It will be a special situation for sure.

The fourth round of the Hankook RCM Cup season will see a hefty field of no less than 19 cars starting the qualifying practice on Friday. From that on everything will go according to the normal schedule with race one on Saturday, and a warm up plus race two on Sunday.

After three rounds the overall is led by Gábor Tim (Apex Racing) with a 20 points advantage over Dániel Nagy (George Racing Team), while third placed Attila Tassi (RCM) already has a huge 56 points deficit. It will be interesting to see how the presence of the highlight qualified guest drivers will affect the battle between the two title aspirants.

The schedule of the Pannóniaring event (times CET):

Friday:
17:00 – Qualifying (20 min)

Saturday:
14:50 – Race one (30 min + 1 lap)

Sunday:
8:25 – Warm up (10 min)
14:05 – Race one (30 min + 1 lap)

RCMCup - Lantos András