Tom Chilton dropped five spots for contact with Engstler

Arena Motorsport driver Tom Chilton has been docked five places after an incident in qualifying with Franz Engstler which will see his Ford start from last. The British driver was apologetic to Engstler for the mistake with no animosity between the pair.

The two Arena Fords and the two Engstler BMWs were running together throughout most of Q1 in a session where slipstreaming was vital and reportedly worth up to half a second, though late in the session Chilton dived up the inside of Franz Engstler’s BMW at Turn 5 and locked up, knocking Engstler out of qualifying, but immediately went and apologised to the German.

“(Engstler and Ng) had made a mistake at the chicane and touched each other and some bodywork came off, and they pulled across to the left,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes.

“So I went up the inside to follow (James Nash), but I’d never dived up the inside before, I’d always gone down the middle of the track and didn’t realise there was such a drop.”

“I’d also changed my LS, which basically means you get more power as you have more push on the brakes, and a combination of that and turning and having knocked my diff I locked up, and as soon as I locked up it was game over, I was going where the car was going and I hit Franz.”

“I went up and apologised and he was a gentleman about it, he knew I didn’t mean to do it.”

The stewards decided to give Chilton a five place penalty for the first race, which means he will start 21st and last as he’d qualified 19th, and from his qualifying spot in 19th.

Looking to tomorrow’s races, Chilton added:
“I haven’t really got any expectations, because I’ll be treating it as a test session. I’m going to try tomorrow to get (the performance) back through other ways, it usually doesn’t make much difference and just changes the tyre life, but we’ll see. ”