Mat’o Homola at a loss to explain Thailand puncture

DG Sport Compétition’s Mat’o Homola was bitterly disappointed to miss out on scoring the team’s and Opel’s first win in the TCR International Series in Thailand, after a puncture with two laps to go side-lined his Astra TCR, after he’d built a seven-second lead.

Homola was looking all set for victory for his second race in a row, but this time it was a puncture, not a late race pass, that deprived him of victory.

“I managed to make a gap and then I controlled that, then n the seventh lap I felt some minor vibrations and I knew it was coming from one of the front tyres,” Homola told TouringCarTimes. “We don’t know why it punctured, as we think we had a good balance; maybe we had too much camber, we have to analyse that.

“We had a good race pace, and it’s disappointing to finish like that with two laps to go.”

Homola finished ninth in Race 2 after starting tenth, struggling to fight with the pack as he’d kept his best tyres for the first race.

“We changed the set-up a bit for Race 2, but I had old tyres for Race 2, so the car was not working as well as the other guys around me on newer tyres,” he said. “At least I showed we had something in qualifying and in Race 1.”