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Jos finishes eighth in Rally Hungary: 'Happy with the result'

Published on 11 May 2025 by Florence Cobben

Jos Verstappen and his navigator Renaud Jamoul finished eighth in the Rally Hungary, in the second round of European Rally Championship (ERC). It’s an impressive effort from the 53-year-old driver, who took on top European championship drivers in his Skoda Fabia RS Rally 2 car, and above all aimed simply to gain experience on the challenging Hungarian gravel course.

“Before we traveled to Hungary, I had set my cap on eighth place,” Jos said. “It was very challenging and difficult. Renaud did a fantastic job guiding me through the rally. I am happy with this result, even though we are still far from where we want to be – we will keep working hard to improve. There is a lot to reflect on and analyze. But there’s a lot to walk away with, especially the experience of a driving a rally on gravel.”

After Saturday, seven timed stages had been distanced, ending with Verstappen twelfth in the overall standings of the rally. The rally took place an hour’s drive from Budapest. On Sunday, a total of six more stages were scheduled, spread over three different courses.

During the first run, Jos noted a time good for P15 on Iszka (15.34km) at +33.5s. On Tés (10.25km), a technical course through the woods, Jos finished P12 (+15.4s). “The conditions were tricky, and we had very little grip,” Jos told us. “Sometimes we went way too hard into a corner, so we have to adjust the braking points in the notes. We are doing our best. I adjusted my driving style to accommodate the gravel, and we’re learning a lot from this. The first time over these courses was difficult, but now we can improve.”

Things took a turn for the worse on Nagylőtér (5,54km), the course with a large jump, with Verstappen ending in P37 (+1:36.3s). The finish is owed to an incident on the route: Verstappen shot off and slid sideways over a bush, losing a lot of time. “I was confused, because there were so many tracks and it wasn’t clear where you had to go. Of course we have the notes, but you’re also following your eyes to see where to go. I just made a mistake.”

After the first three stages on Sunday, Verstappen was thirteenth overall. In the second run over the same three routes, Verstappen succeeded in converting his new experience into speed. On Iska he finished eleventh (+26,5s), on Tés ninth (+21,3s) and on Nagylőtér he finished in eighth place (+28,0s).

“It was rough terrain with a lot of big stones. We are glad that we didn’t run any flat tyres”, Jos explained afterwards. “It went well, we have improved and we made small adjustments to the notes. We will continue at it, and in the end, we were competitive. I think it’s promising, the top of the competition have a lot more experience than I do. But we did our best to get to where we are.”

After thirteen stages in the Rally Hungary, Verstappen and Jamoul finished eighth overall. The total distance, 192,96km, was crossed in 1:57:30.8, in total a +7:00.1 gap to winner Roope Korhonen and navigator Anssi Viinikka, who took the win from Andrea Mabellini. Mabellini was well on his way to victory when he dropped out of the Rally with two stages to go after sustaining too much damage from a flat tyre.