De Ronde, who won the bronze medal at the Driving World Championships in Breda in September, set the fastest times in the third leg of this season’s series to claim the title with an emphatic seven second advantage over local favourite József Dobrovitz senior.

After missing the World Cup last year, Budapest joined the series once again to the joy of the Hungarian fans who created a thunderous atmosphere at the Lászlo Papp Arena.

Prior to the competition the crowd were treated to a performance from the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

Following the first race of the weekend de Ronde held an advantage of six seconds going into the second round.

Despite the heavy footing, his experienced team of mixed bay horses were even quicker in the second leg and produced an overall time of 267.59 seconds.

“This is the best thing about the sport, Dobrovitz drove a very good round and I had to try to top this," said de Ronde.

"I knew that if I had one knock down, I could lose my advantage, so I really went for it.

Dobrovitz Sr finished third in Stockholm in Sweden last week and managed to improve on that to claim silver in Budapest in a total time of 275,14.

Belgium's Edouard Simonet almost missed out on qualification for the second round of the event following a wider turn going into the last phase of his first attempt but he managed to correct himself to advance to Sunday.

After he knocked the first cone down on his final round, two other balls fell in the second marathon obstacle, dropping him to third place in a time of 294.00.

József Dobrovitz Jr failed to qualify for the second round in his home country as he finished in fourth place, followed by Rainer Duen of Germany, who had one knock down.

Wild card driver Miklos Juhász of Hungary finished in sixth place.

Australian Boyd Exell remains at the top of the World Cup standings on 17 points, despite not competing this weekend.

Dobrovitz remains in second position on 14 while IJsbrand Chardon of The Netherlands completes the top three on 10.

The next leg of the World Cup is set to take place in Geneva in Switzerland between December 8 and 11.