Norbert Michelisz admits he is ‘enjoying it a lot’ being the most experienced driver in Hyundai Motorsport’s FIA World Touring Car Cup campaign, as he prepares for his second season with the Hyundai Elantra N TCR.
Following the retirement of touring car veteran Gabriele Tarquini, 37-year-old Michelisz is now one of the most experienced drivers on the WTCR grid.
In his new role as leading the BRC charge, an optimistic Michelisz believes he and the team are heading into thew new season in a better place than they were last year, despite Hyundai scaling back its involvement to just two cars and one team.
“We realised quite soon last year that the car has a lot of potential, but sometimes it was difficult to exploit this potential,” said Michelisz to TouringCas.Net. “We started the season very, very strong – much stronger than we expected – but then at some venues we struggled a bit.
“For this season, I think some of these struggles or inconsistencies [will be better], because we have more understanding of what to do to the car in each particular place.
“I feel like we are higher in terms of the base this year than we were last year, so in the end I expect this to also be translated into results.”
Michelisz has 295 race starts to his name, meaning that only Yvan Muller, Rob Huff, Tiago Monteiro and Tom Coronel have more race starts than him heading into the new season.
“I am enjoying it a lot, being in this position, although it’s quite new for me,” continued Michelisz. “You realise that you have more responsibility and of course slightly more pressure, but this is something that I was looking forward to and I’m enjoying it.
“This period comes anyway if you are doing things right as a race car driver or even outside of racing in sports or life in general. It’s a natural kind of progression, to learn new things and to be good in a slightly different environment and then just to understand what you need to do differently.
“I feel prepared and I’m enjoying this new role. I don’t think that things will be easy for me for this season, especially with Mikel [Azcona] being a fantastic driver, so I don’t expect myself to be unchallenged within the team – it’s quite the opposite.
“The dynamics have changed compared to last year and I will try to take the positives out of this situation.”
The Hungarian will be joined in 2022 by young Spaniard Azcona, who Michelisz feels is the perfect fit for the team’s assault on the drivers’ and teams’ championships this year.
“Mikel, for me, has very, very high skills and the perfect combination of age, dynamics, aggression, speed and experience, so I really think that the bar internally will be very high.
“But I was always the type of person who was motivated by these things, so his presence will help me to grow as a person and as a race car driver.”
Michelisz is unperturbed by the fact that he has only one race during the past two seasons, insisting that consistency is more important than outright victories.
“Winning races is always the first thing you hope for as a race car driver. But to be very honest, after winning the championship, for me it’s about going for the championship.
“I know that to win the championship you need to win races but for me, being consistent and extracting most of my possibilities is sometimes at least as much of a satisfaction as to win the race, because consistency and this kind of efficiency is the key to win the championship.
“Sometimes you do a perfect job, and you still end up not winning a race, or only winning one or two races in a season, and sometimes you have the package to win almost every race and still you are not consistent enough to fight for the championship.
“It’s a very nice feeling to win races and it will be one of my priorities this season, but moreover my priority will be to be there even on the days when we won’t have the tools to fight for race wins, because my target is to fight for the title.
“This means that on the days when you struggle you need to exploit the maximum from your possibilities.
“Sometimes you will end up finishing P8 instead of finishing P12, and this is also a very nice and tough challenge for a race car driver.
“In the end I start the season with a very positive feeling and a very confident feeling.”