ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel says it was a “beautiful weekend” at Spa-Francorchamps after the Dutch driver scored his second World Touring Car Championship podium finish of the season in race two.
Coronel qualified in eighth for the first race on Saturday, which became third for the reverse-grid second race of the day.
The Dutchman made up two positions in race one to finish fifth, with a last-gasp pass on Honda’s Tiago Monteiro at the very end of the race. Coronel beat Monteiro to fifth by just 0.073 seconds and he admits that saving his tyres to the end of the race gave him the edge.
“After qualifying, I still had six new tyres left – two of them, I used in the first race and I saved the other four for the second race,” explained Coronel. “In the first race there was a long battle with the Hondas. We were three abreast after Eau Rouge and towards Les Combes I was in the sandwich and had two wheels on the grass.
“I had a huge battle with [Gianni] Morbidelli and Monteiro, but I saved my tyres to mount a final attack on the final lap. That worked out just before the finish, so that I came fifth with a very tiny margin, behind Morbidelli, but ahead of Monteiro.”
Whilst race one was a good result for Coronel, it was the second race of the day in which he shone. Starting from the second row of the grid, Coronel immediately got off to a strong start and was leading pole-sitter Morbidelli before the first corner.
“I started [race two] with four fresh tyres and I knew that I had to make maximum use of them for the first three to four laps,” said Coronel of race two. “That worked out – I had a good start and I was in the lead quite soon. After that, I was only pushing to build up a margin that was as big as possible.”
With Coronel leading, behind him the Citron duo of Yvan Muller and Jos María López were making rapid progress through the field. The four-time race winner admits that he had no way to fight with the Citroën drivers and their speed advantage.
“I was leading by over two seconds and things were going well until the first Citroën approached quickly,” explained Coronel. “Up to that point, I had made no mistakes and I wanted to keep it that way. On the other hand, I didn’t want to hand over the lead just like that either. In hindsight, I probably lost a little bit too much time [at the final chicane], allowing Muller to close up quickly as well.
“The Citroën drivers have so much excess speed, there is no way to fight with them, so I let Muller past easily and focussed on third place. That worked out and thus, it still became a great race with a great result, plenty of world championship points and nothing but happy faces.
“Eventually, it turned out to be a beautiful weekend, but at first, it didn’t look like it,” summarised Coronel, citing a lack of speed in the weekend’s earlier free practice sessions. “This really was the maximum that could be achieved and I am glad that I was able to show it to the many fans here. I drove well, I didn’t make any mistakes and now, the car is in great condition to be loaded into the container on Tuesday for the next race in Argentina.”