Tom Coronel sorry for qualifying clash with team-mate

Tom Coronel and Darryl O’Young both came together in the final moments of the first part of qualifying, which stopped either car being able to improve in the session, and both will line-up in 12th and 13th for both of tomorrow’s races.

With slipstreaming again the story of qualifying, Tom Coronel had managed to break into the top ten with a tow off of his ROAL Motorsport team-mate, but ran into the back of O’Young before Turn 4 which saw heavy front-end damage to Coronel’s car and O’Young unable to improve to get into the top 12 spots needed to progress to Q2.

Coronel apologised to his team-mate after the incident and took full responsibility for the accident.

“I just completely missed the braking (point),” said Coronel to TouringCarTimes. “t was just a misjudgement of myself, there are no excuses. I completely missed the signal which was 150 and then it was already too late.”

O’Young felt his day was going well and still lines up as the second highest positioned BMW on the grid tomorrow.

“Up to that point I think it was going pretty good,” said O’Young to TouringCarTimes. “t wasn’t good because I was towing Tom and Tom got into the session and put me down to P13, but after that corner I was going to pull off and Tom was going to tow me for one more lap…but then Tom missed the board and braked 50 meters late.

The BMWs have been struggling with straight-line speed at Marrakech, slower than Lada, SEAT, Chevrolet and Honda in the speed traps, and despite the incident, O’Young believes the final outcome of qualifying might have been little different.

“I still feel quite happy with the performance, up to that point I was the quickest BMW, we have no chance here,” he added.

The stewards investigated the incident and determined that no further action was required.