Despite only taking delivery of the brand new KIA cee’d TCR early on Saturday, Ferenc Ficza demonstrated the car’s future potential by finishing 15^th and 14^th after twice starting from the back of the grid.
In fact, the Korean car had stopped during its very first lap in yesterday’s Free Practice due to a broken throttle cable. Therefore, Ficza was finally only able to drive the KIA for the first time during Qualifying and treated the session as a shake down. He qualified 23^rd and lost another position on the grid due to a penalty from the previous event.
In both races, the young Hungarian was able to recover, although another penalty for a grid position infringement dropped him from 15^th to 19^th in Race 1.
The second race saw him again climbing up to 14^th, which would have earned one point for KIA in the Model of the Year Trophy should the car not have been racing under a temporary homologation form.

“I was able to complete both races, which was an achievement in itself considering that we missed both free practice sessions and the car only turned a wheel for the first time during Qualifying. There is still a lot of work to do; the set-up has to be done from scratch, and I hope that we will have the budget to do some testing, but the car has great potential. It feels completely different from anything I have driven so far, but I am really impressed,” Ficza said.