AUGUST 8, 2002
Baumgartner to run a Jordan in Budapest
The Jordan team has announced that Zsolt Baumgartner, the Hungarian F3000 driver, will have the chance to impress his home crowds at the Hungarian Grand Prix when he will be given the chance to give a demonstration run in a Jordan Honda EJ12 on race morning
Baumgartner, aged 21, races in F3000 this year with Nordic Racing. Previously he has competed in international F3000, German F3, European Formula Renault and Formula Renault in France and Germany. There have been no Hungarian drivers in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship although in 1987 Kesjar Csaba tested an F1 Zakspeed at the Hungaroring. Csaba was killed the following Spring in a Formula 3 accident at the Norisring at the wheel of a Schubel Motorsport Dallara.
Although Hungary has been searching for a modern racing star the country can boast having been the home of the man who won the first major race to be called a Grand Prix. That was at Le Mans in 1906 where the French-domiciled Hungarian mechanic Ferenc Szisz took victory in a Renault. He stayed with Renault until his retirement and returned to the Hungarian village of Tiszaszentimre where he lived quietly on a Renault pension until his death in 1970 - at the age of 97.