Mat’o Homola “could have been even faster” on pole position lap

Mat’o Homola led a DG Sport Compétition 1-2 in Qualifying in Bahrain. Despite only completing two laps of the track before his engine overheated, prompting an engine change, the Slovakian was almost four tenths faster than team-mate Pierre-Yves Corthals, who inherited pole position as Homola goes to the back of the grid for the first race due to the engine change penalty.

“It’s been a tough weekend for us”, said the Opel driver. “We had a problem with the engine in Free Practice because of the heat and the guys worked all night to change it. I only did two laps yesterday and so Qualifying was a big mystery for me.”

According to Homola the experience on the track from last year helped him cope with the lack of track time this weekend: “I knew how the track behaves and how I should behave from last year. Congratulations to DG Sport and to Opel on their first pole position.”

The Slovakian says he was curious to see what his Opel Astra TCR could do, but he believes he could have gone a little faster as he made a mistake on his flying lap: “I won’t start from pole because of the penalty, but I wanted to see what the car could do. I made one mistake on my quickest lap, so I think I could have been ever faster. We will see what we can do in the two races now.”