CHIPPING Norton’s Sean Walkinshaw raced to an impressive career-best fifth place finish in the EuroFormula Open at the Hungaroring.

The 20-year-old completed a good weekend by finishing tenth in the second race despite suffering from flu.

The results saw him climb into equal 11th in the driver standings.

Walkinshaw set an excellent lap time of 1min 39.125secs to qualify on the second row of the grid on Saturday.

After a cautious start, Walkinshaw, who competes for Campos Racing, charged up to fifth, before moving up another place following a slip by John Simonyan.

However, Walkinshaw slipped two positions as he crossed the line in sixth, before being promoted a place when Simonyan was handed a drive-through penalty.

“Everything went almost to plan on Saturday”, he said.

“I managed to put all my best sectors together in qualifying to put us up there – we always knew on Friday we had the pace to do it.”

Despite the effects of flu, Walkinshaw was little more than 0.3secs shy of the top five, but had to settle for 15th on the grid on Sunday.

After a good start, he safely threaded his way through the field to finish tenth.

Walkinshaw is next in action at Silverstone on July 19-20.

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