Henry Kwong excluded after Macau crash with Mehdi Bennani

Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani was eliminated from race one and from the remainder of the Macau Grand Prix after a last lap collision with the TC2T class Campos SEAT of Henry Kwong, who has been excluded from the race by the stewards. The Moroccan has vented his frustration at the wild card entries which he says have ruined his weekend.

Bennani had taken his first win and the first win for Proteam last month in Shanghai, and was running in ninth place when he was lapping the SEAT León of Hong Kong driver Henry Kwong heading onto the last lap, but the Campos Racing driver swerved into Bennani’s Honda on the straight, knocking him into a spin and straight into the wall at full speed.

“It was also what happened in qualifying, I didn’t have one clear lap because of the TC2T cars,” said at frustrated Bennani to TouringCarTimes. “It was not nice to have trouble with them as we are much quicker and also because of the way they drive. (Kwong) came to me five minutes ago to tell me sorry, but it’s not enough, my weekend is finished.

“It was my last lap, it would have been very easy to give him a blue flag, but then he came across and I was directly into the wall. At least I finished without any pain, because you can get an injury easily if you hit the wall at 200km/h, but for race two it was impossible to race as there was too much damage to the car.”

From next season, the TC2T class will be gone with just the latest TC1 class cars able to compete in the WTCC, with TC2T now reserved for the FIA European Touring Car Cup only.