Koncseg: Last year’s success drives me forward – and we can win again

Named ‘Rallycross Driver of the Year’ in Hungary in 2020, Koncseg stepped up to Supercar level in 2021. After getting to grips with the category, he went on to make his European debut on home soil a year later, prior to contesting two complete seasons in Euro RX1.

Twice advancing to the final along the way – at Mettet and Höljes, winding up fourth on both occasions – the Orosháza native leapt from 11^th in the overall standings in 2023 up to sixth 12 months later. But better still was to come.

In his sole outing in the series in 2025 in front of family and friends at the ‘Red Cauldron’, Koncseg proved to be a consistent contender throughout behind the wheel of his Audi S1. After posting top six times in three of the four heats in the high-calibre field, he duly secured a spot in the all-important final, which he began fourth.

A stellar start elevated the Kárai Motorsport ace immediately to third, and an early joker strategy would transpire to be a masterstroke. Giving chase to title duellists Mika Liimatainen and Yury Belevskiy ahead, when the pair collided on lap two, Koncseg found himself in the pound seats to profit, and by dint of consistently keeping the hammer down, he narrowly pipped Liimatainen to victory following a dramatic last lap joker merge.

As feelgood stories go, it was right up there, as the 44-year-old got the better of a host of young guns and rising stars to prevail, sending the partisan home crowd – not to mention Andreas Bakkerud and Patrick O’Donovan in the commentary box – into rapturous scenes of celebration. He might have entered just a single Euro RX1 event last season, but Koncseg certainly made it count – and now he has developed a taste for winning, he wants to do it again... 

“Last year’s success still drives me forward,” he admitted. “It was a fantastic experience to win at home. We worked a lot on the car’s set-up from one race to the next at Nyirád and progressed step-by-step. We didn’t expect to win, but secretly we felt we were capable of it.

“Still, it was only in the last metres of the final that we truly believed we were in first place and that it might become a reality that we could do what no Hungarian driver had ever managed to do before.

“It’s clearly going to be a very strong field in Euro RX1 this year, but I’m not worried about that, because we’re moving forward. We have got used to the Audi very well, and we’ve refined it further over the winter with notably a new engine that we will try out in the first tests. We’re preparing very carefully. 

“We can definitely win again with this team and this car – we proved last year that we have it in us. Whether we succeed will of course be another question, but the main objective is to have a good time and have fun in the races. I’m really looking forward to the first round!”