A late arrival at the track after welcoming his new baby daughter, Veiby
was also one of the few drivers in the World RX field with no prior experience
of Nyirád Racing Center – rallycross’ legendary ‘Red Cauldron’ – but he soon
got stuck in.
An early joker propelled him to third place in his heat one race on
Saturday, but in company with Timmy Hansen, he then got wrong-footed by KMS –
HORSE Powertrain team-mate Johan Kristoffersson suddenly slowing with a
technical issue on the exit of the last corner in heat two, making unavoidable contact
with Hansen’s Peugeot and ultimately falling back to fourth.
That left Veiby down in eighth position in the intermediate ranking, but
he advanced safely to the final after surviving a first corner semi-final crunch and proceeded
to navigate his way through the opening lap chaos – picking up some battle
scars in the process – to scoop the runner-up spoils.
Twenty-four hours later, the 28-year-old incurred
damage again in heat one after getting caught up in a Turn One squeeze with Hansen
and Niclas Grönholm, after which he dragged his bodywork-trailing Volkswagen Polo
KMS 601 RX to a distant second place behind Kristoffersson.
His pace faded in heat two as he slipped from a closely-challenging
second to fourth at the chequered flag, and he then found himself innocently
implicated in Janko Wieszt’s dramatic start-line shunt in the semi-final.
Winding up second in the re-started bout, from fourth on the grid for
the final, the Kongsvinger native darted into the joker on lap one – a tactic
that enabled him to leapfrog both Hansen brothers as well as CE Dealer Team’s
Klara Andersson.
He thereafter edged away to complete a Kristoffersson Motorsport
one-two, with his tenth podium finish in the top-flight firing Veiby up to
second in the title table – although he recognises he still has some work to do
to catch championship leader Kristoffersson, 25 points ahead in the standings
and more than ten seconds up the road in the race...
“There have been a lot of emotions,” he acknowledged. “Luckily, [his daughter]
arrived on time so I was able to spend a few hours with her and [partner] Caroline.
Once I got to Nyirád, it was up-and-down with hard racing, not least in the
first turn which invites everyone to a fight! It’s a really
nice track, proper old-school rallycross with some corners where you can really
‘send’ it and also very technical.
“I think I lost three bumpers on Saturday, purely through being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. I drove hardly a whole lap
where the steering wheel felt right! That meant the heats weren’t the best
and the final was just a big mess, but it was nice
to have a bit of luck for once and to end up on the podium.
“In Sunday’s
final, fourth was a difficult place to start being on the outside, but I took the
joker on the first lap and was surprised nobody else did the same. I had a big ‘moment’
sending it in when I got pretty close to the wall, but I managed to catch the
other guys a bit and when they then jokered, they came out behind so it proved
to be the right strategy.
“Overall,
it was a good weekend and we scored some good points for the championship. As a
team, we’re where we want to be, but at the same time, it’s no secret that this
guy (Kristoffersson) has something else so we need to work hard and see what we
can do for the next rounds...”
Greece
Poland
Portugal