The 44th edition of the Tour de Hongrie starts on May 10th in Szentgotthard, very close to the Austrian border. The five-stage race will see riders cover 879km and 7125 altitude meters before finishing the race with 15 laps of “criterium” in Budapest. Stages 3 and 4 look like they’ll decide the overall winner, but there is much more to fight for in stages 1, 2, and 5 with bunch sprints.

Team GC leader Hermann Pernstainer will test his legs after a crash in Frankfurt a week ago, while the sprint leader, Phil Bauhaus, who’s familiar with winning in Hungary, where he won 2 stages in 2021 as well as the points jersey. The support team is all very young – recent signee Nicolo Buratti is 21, Bahrain National Champion Ahmed Madan will start his second race this year(22), Matevz Govekar is 23, and he’ll be the last lead-out man for Phil, while Cameron Scott is 25 and will be another link in Bauhaus’ sprint train. 

SD Enrico Poitschke: “Hermann Pernsteiner will be our leader for the Tour de Hongrie, but we shouldn’t put too much pressure on him since he’s coming back from a hard crash in Frankfurt that caused him to stop training for a while. That being said, we’ll try him on the two mountain stages and see what will be the outcome, but the focus is for sure on the sprint stages, Phil Bauhaus comes with big ambitions, and we’ll try to fight for a stage win. The team around him is young, and the guys need to find each other in the sprint, which will not be easy, but everyone is very motivated. We have three possibilities in the sprint, and we think we can do a very good result and hopefully a stage win. That is our goal for the race, with the hope that “Perni” can do well in GC. This is the first time that the team is riding in this lineup. We will learn stage by stage and in the process, give our best. There are very strong contenders for the sprint stage (Jakobsen, Bennet, Gronewegen, Ewan), but Phil is ready to fight.” 

Our leader Hermann Pernsteiner: “For the GC, stages 3 and 4 will be decisive, they have mountain finish, and on paper, they look really challenging, but let’s see how hard they are. As for my form, I got a lot of races already, Hungary was not planned, but I got it in the program this week. In Frankfurt, I had good legs but had a bad crash and a lot of pain, but got better day by day. So let’s see how it goes, for sure I want to aim for the highest possible in the GC, as there are some good climbers there. If I have legs, I won’t be hiding there. It should be a nice race, and it’s kind of a home race for me, as the start of the race is not that far from my house – 70km, so it’s always nice to race so close to home. I think we have a good team to support Phil for the sprints and me for the mountain stages.”