Tom Coronel furious with driving standards, as Tom Chilton gets a drive-through

ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel believes he will be lucky if he is able to take part in the test scheduled for the Nürburgring on April 28th after his car was heavily damaged in two incidents in today’s races in Morocco.

The Dutch driver never completed more than a lap in either race after he was hit by his team-mate Tom Chilton in race one, which broke the front-right suspension on his Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1.

The team managed to repair it for race two to allow him to take his front-row starting position in the race, but was then involved in another incident which is still under investigation, which saw him spun into the wall after contact from Zengő Honda driver Norbert Michelisz, and into the factory Honda of Tiago Monteiro, with both cars eliminated from the race.

“Chilton outbraked himself completely and went straight into the chicane and hit me, I cannot be positive about that one I’m afraid. He makes a mistake, I’m out,” said an angry Coronel after race one to TouringCarTimes.

After the crash in race two, remarking on the damage to his car, a year after his Chevrolet Cruze was damaged and unable to be repaired for the following race weekend at Paul Ricard in 2014, Coronel was concerned about the damage sustained.

“Michelisz just couldn’t stop the car and hit me. He didn’t hit me once, he kept pushing and that’s why I went sideways. (The damage is) really bad again. Next week we have a test at the Nürburging, which I think will be a big surprise if I could test there.”

Coronel then made a call for more action to be taken against drivers following today’s accidents.

“Michelisz just said he couldn’t stop the car, but I don’t care. They should be held responsible, it’s nice to say sorry, but they are race car drivers and they should be in control of fast cars, and they’re not in control of fast cars.”

Tom Chilton accepted full responsibility for the incident in race one, for which he has received a 30 second drive-through penalty applied retrospectively, which has dropped him from tenth to 14th in the results of race one.

“It was a complete mistake by myself,” he said. “I was four car lengths back and I braked two car lengths earlier than usual, but from the very initial bite on the brakes I locked up, and once I’d locked up that was it, it wasn’t going to stop, and I’m really sorry for Tom.”

Michelisz has also been called to the stewards for the crash at the start of race two, which the Hungarian was still unclear about after the race.

“After the start for the second race I’m not sure if I was touched from the back, but I had some front locking and I tried to avoid Tom in front but we were too close to each other. I’m sorry because I had contact with him,” said Michelisz to TouringCarTimes.

Should Michelisz receive a similar 30-second penalty, that would drop him from sixth to 12th in the final results for race two.