Tom Coronel believes he is ‘very lucky’ after discovering that his crash in practice for the World Touring Car Championship in Vila Real, which ruled him out for the weekend, was a 25G impact.
Coronel’s Chevrolet Cruze suffered from a failure of the bolts which held on the front-left wheel, resulting in the wheel coming loose under braking for Turn 19. Coronel was helpless to avoid going down the escape road and into a parked fire truck at the end.
“On lap four in practice, I was driving at high speed and had to turn right in front of a bed with flowers and grass,” explained the Dutchman. “Under braking, many things happened underneath the car, but it certainly didn’t brake.
“As a result, I ran through the grass at high speed, hit an obstacle and finally came to a halt against an ambulance that was parked there.
“The impact was huge and later on, it turned out that the reason were the five bolts of the left front wheel that were broken. The wheel got loose, but was still in the wheel arch.
“I didn’t have any brakes and couldn’t do anything because of it. I was a passenger in my own car and in hindsight, I am happy that the ambulance was parked there, rather than blocks of concrete with the impact that would have caused.
“All the safety measures worked well and an investigation by the FIA revealed that the force of the impact was around 25 G.
“As a result, the safety belts of the car were cut in two, just like the ties of the HANS (Head And Neck Support) system and the serial number of my helmet was noted. That can never be used again. In fact, I was very lucky.”
Whilst Coronel still doesn’t know why the bolts sheared, which has happened before to some of his competitors, he adds that the ROAL Motorsport team and Campos Racing, who are lending their support to the repair, have a big task to fix the car in time for shipping to the next round in Argentina next month.
“Because of the impact, the engine was dislocated, the entire front wheel suspension was broken and there was massive damage to the bodywork and the chassis. The car really was like a banana.
“Here at the track, the ROAL Motorsport mechanics already started to remove the parts that were damaged; even before the race started, they made their way with the truck and trailer with the wreck to Barcelona, where the car will be rebuilt for the second half of the season in the workshop of our colleagues from Campos Motorsport.
“Campos still has two of these cars that we can use for spare parts and they have also made two mechanics available to support us to stay within the time frame.”
“There is a lot of work to do to get everything sorted in time, but everybody has assured me that they are confident.”