Photo: WTCC Media

Tom Coronel given a fine and FIA duties for unsporting behaviour

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ROAL Motorsport’s Tom Coronel has been given a 1,000 EUR fine and ordered to perform an activity for the FIA as punishment for his actions following qualifying yesterday in which he insulted Citroën’s Ma Qing Hua, after the Chinese driver had allegedly blocked him in qualifying.

The block was investigated by the stewards on Saturday evening, with the officials deeming there was no action to be taken and that Ma made way as soon as he could.

Coronel was then investigated by the stewards following the introduction of a “new element” today. Although Coronel apologised for his conduct to Ma, the stewards considered that Coronel “used offensive words against driver of car #33 and that behaviour is not acceptable in an FIA Championship”.

The penalty is a fine of 1,000 EUR and an obligation to accomplish some work of publish interest for the FIA.

“They said I should not call him a stupid driver and this kind of things, they said they don’t want that. So I have a 1,000 EUR fine and for the FIA I have to a schooling thing or an event,” said Coronel to TouringCarTimes.

“So, it seems I’m not allowed to say to someone if he you that he’s stupid,” he added.

Citroën were unhappy with the conduct of the Dutch driver, which carried on via social media through the evening, before Coronel’s own video was used as evidence in the stewards ruling.

“His behaviour was completely disrespectful,” said Citroën Racing team principal Yves Matton to TouringCarTimes.

“If you look at the classification, you’ll see the Chevrolets were the last five cars, and it doesn’t happen very often that he’s the fastest Chevrolet, that’s the reality. You can make your show, but make it in a fair way, not like he was doing. Maybe he thinks he was going to be five places better than Valente, but that’s not happened before.

“All the videos were analysed until long into the night, I can understand his feeling in one way that he was really frustrated in not being able to do a time that he thought could be better, but afterwards there are ways to do things and it’s not because you are the showman from touring cars that you need to do that.”