Tom Coronel says “it was like driving on barbed wire” in France, after the ROAL Motorsport driver scored just one points finish in the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) races at Circuit Paul Ricard.
Coronel failed to get into Q2 for the third meeting in a row on Saturday, missing out on the important segment by just 0.04 seconds. That left the Dutchman with plenty of work to do from 13th on the grid on Sunday, with a car which the experienced touring car driver was struggling with.
“In free practice sessions and qualifying, we had to work hard to set a decent lap time,” explained Coronel, who had to deal with high temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius. “We didn’t manage to end up further up the ranks.
“I missed out on making it into the second session by only four hundredths of a second. That is the session in which the starting grid positions for the second race are determined, but unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the drivers in that session. [It was] too bad, because in 13th place on the grid for both races, I had to move up through the ranks twice.”
Race one yielded no points for Coronel, who struggled to a point-less 12th place finish despite the retirements of two drivers in front.
“The car didn’t run well, I had no grip and no acceleration,” said a frustrated Coronel. “It was like driving on barbed wire. I fought for what I was worth and I even lost one more place to Rickard Rydell at the finish line.”
Race two was the 43-year-old’s second best result of the season so far, with Coronel making up places to finish seventh by the chequered flag.
“In between the two races, we changed the settings of the car and that worked out well. In the second race, things were going much better. The tyres had more grip, the car had better throttle response and it was easier to battle with the drivers around me – I even overtook several drivers. Moreover, I had some luck with drivers in front of me, so that I was able to finish seventh.”
Coronel and his ROAL Motorsport team have opted to stay on in Le Castellet for a day to film some media segments, followed by testing on Tuesday.
“We are staying here at Paul Ricard and on Monday we will be filming for RTL and our YouTube channel. For Tuesday, we have four sets of tyres for extensive test sessions.
“We have never really been able to test last year and this year, so we hope to complete the final fine-tuning for the rest of the season with this test.
“The next races take place at a street circuit in Portugal, which is new in the championship and new to me. Normally, I do quite well on street circuits and I hope that we can put in a good performance there with the test sessions we will be doing now.”