Aurélien Panis out, Zsolt Szabo in at Zengõ Motorsport

Aurélien Panis has left the Zengõ Motorsport team in the World Touring Car Championship with immediate effect, with the Hungarian squad restoring an all-Hungarian line-up for the next race in Argentina, by adding their ETCC driver Zsolt Szabo to the squad.

Panis, whose best results are pair of tenth-place finishes at Monza and at the Hungaroring, is set to announce a programme in “another series” with continued support from Honda France shortly.

The Zengõ team plan to rotate the driver line-up of their second Honda Civic for the remainder of the season, which will likely be between their ETCC and TCR International Series drivers, Szabo, Norbert Nagy and Ferenc Ficza.

“Zsolt has impressed us with his pace and potential and ability to learn new tracks and adapt to new situations very quickly,” said team principal Zoltan Zengõ.

“As a team that takes pride from the work it has done in giving opportunities to young talents and nurturing their careers, we are very pleased to give Zsolt this opportunity in the WTCC and excited to watch him progress. It will be tough but there’s no better way to learn and he’ll be given all the help possible to aid his transition.

“While we are committed to running a second car alongside Dániel Nagy for the rest of the season, we are considering iving two of our other young drivers, Ferenc Ficza and Norbert Nagy, the chance to do a WTCC race and we’ll make an announcement on this in due course.”