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Mladá Boleslav, 6 September, 2011 – The eighth event of this year's Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC) is taking place over the upcoming weekend. After celebrating a podium sweep in Zlín, ŠKODA is leaving its home ground to move southeast to Hungary. The surroundings of Pécs will see the traditional local asphalt rally for the 45th time, but for the first time in history as part of the IRC series. ŠKODA Motorsport is going to use Kopecký & Starý who are still in the game for the title after winning the latest event, the Barum Rally in Zlín.

This weekend in Hungary they will be accompanied by Freddy Loix & Fréderic Miclotte who came just 1.2 sec behind them in Zlín. Converted to metres, we are talking about some 2 metres which, considering the fact that the rally had 250 competition kilometres in total, is indeed an incredibly small difference! The group of drivers to drive Škoda Fabia Super 2000s will also include Andreas Mikkelsen of ŠKODA UK Motorsport who put in a great performance in Zlín but missed the podium in the end, Mark Wallenwein, Matthias Kahle and Hermann Gassner jun. who is about to make his IRC debut in Pécs. The current IRC leader Juho Hänninen is skipping the event in Hungary. Instead, he is going to gather strength for the SWRC that, with just two more events to go this season, is Hänninen's priority this year.

Jan Kopecký: "Our result in Zlín is a great motivation, we have achieved our first victory this year and we want to be successful also in the rest of this season. This weekend is going to be our Hungarian premiere - as far as I know, the track is fast and "jumpy", quite similar to the conditions here in the Czech Republic, which could be good for both us and the car."

Freddy Loix: "After coming second at the Barum Rally, I am looking forward very much to this new event. I hope it will be a tough but attractive fight again, just like in Zlín. The Mescek Rally will be new to nearly all of the drivers, which makes it even more interesting. Everybody knows how much I like asphalt rallies, and I believe I will win as many championship points as possible."

The Hungarian Rally starts on Friday, 9 September with a prologue. The event programme includes 14 stages (252 kilometres).

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