Tom Coronel spent most of the first World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) race fighting amongst a hoard of bright blue Cyan Racing cars. Although he couldn’t keep the factory-supported drivers behind, Coronel would still go on to chalk up a respectable fifth place finish at the infamous Nürburgring.
The opening round of the season at Zolder marked a resurgence of form for the charismatic Dutchman, and that pattern seems set to continue around the Nordschleife.
After hopping from a Honda in 2018 to a CUPRA in 2019, 2020 marks his third different car in three years, following the DHL Comtoyou Racing team’s switch to Audi power. Having had a difficult couple of seasons behind the wheel of the two prior vehicles, something finally seems to have clicked for the former WTCC independents’ champion.
Coronel himself attributes his upturn in results to the support that Audi’s customer racing division provided during the off-season.
“You know, we are in a privateer outfit with Comtoyou and [we are] an Audi customer and they were helping a lot with the winter testing,” he explained. “If you can see you can at least fight, breath down their neck and put a little pressure on at some points. That’s good for the outfit we are in.
“Of course, I would like to win but you also have to be realistic. But the next race I will try again.”
Coronel gave the Cyan Racing crew a good run for their money, but ultimately he didn’t quite have enough to keep them at bay.
“There were a few points where I could make a little gap, but I was really concentrating on myself and Yvan,” he recalled.
“I felt ‘OK, the gap is bigger’, then I looked in my mirror and Thed [Björk] was in my ass. So OK, probably that was not fast enough.
“There are some interesting parts I should look back on the video, but I thought the speed was good, everything was alright, [however] there were some dodgy moments where it was very tricky on the straight.
“I could see the Lynk & Cos were very fast, so they could get my draft really well. But Thed was fair, really fair. I could see it was coming at some stage and I saw directly Yann [Ehrlacher] moving with him, so I could not close the gap completely.
“We were side by side for a corner, but we know each other very well so it should be OK. Everybody wants to finish at the beginning of the season, the fights are a little bit more clean than in the end. But [we scored] good points and I’m happy to be fifth here at the Nordschleife.”