Photo: WTCC Media

Tom Chilton hopes to continue with ROAL next season

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British driver Tom Chilton hopes to continue in the FIA World Touring Car Championship next season, and hopes to continue working with RML and ROAL Motorsport in the WTCC, developing and racing the Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 in 2015.

The 29-year-old finished eighth in the drivers’ standings this season, taking an outright victory from pole position at Beijing last month, the only non-reversed grid victory for a team outside of the all-conquering Citroën factory team this year, and hopes to continue to a fourth year in the series next season.

In Macau, Chilton started from ninth on the grid in race one, a strategic move in qualifying to ensure a strong grid position for race two, but two flawed starts cost him positions in both races’ opening laps and ultimately the opportunity to win the second race as well as overtake ROAL team-mate Tom Coronel in the points standings.

“I tried to get a really good start (in race one) and I ended up stalling, and then probably did the most overtaking manoeuvres in that race to finish P12, so it was a lot of fun from my perspective,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes. “In race two, initially off the line I got a good start, and then because it was so good I thought I was going to get some wheel-spin so I pushed the clutch in just a little bit to relieve it but then the revs went up so I lost acceleration, so that tiny little delay ended up completely killing me on the way up the straight.”

“I think we were struggling here a little more compared to Campos as they bought the new upgrades a few rounds ago and we decided not to,” added Chilton. “Those upgrades would have massively helped on this circuit, so they definitely had a huge advantage over us. Realistically, if (Pepe) Oriola hadn’t binned it in the wall (in qualifying), I think he and Valente would have finished ahead of us as the new parts are really good.”

Looking ahead to 2015, the 2010 BTCC independents’ champion is targeting a return with Robert Ravaligia and Aldo Preo’s Venice-based ROAL Motorsport team, with which Dutch team-mate Tom Coronel is also set to continue.

“I’m very happy where I am. I think ROAL Motorsport’s the most professional team out of all the Chevrolets,” said Chilton. “RML are very happy to support the customer programmes rather than run them, and I think ROAL are doing a very good job, Tom (Coronel) and I are 1-2 of the Chevrolets (in the standings) and we’ve won the Yokohama Teams’ championship, so for me, this is the best place for me to be.

“We definitely need to get the new upgrades next year and we need to do some testing as we’ve done none this season. Even if we did just six solid days of testing we’ll find a nice chunk of time on the car, the RML upgrades will be a nice step forwards, as RML are the most professional touring car team on the planet.”