Tom Coronel says he was finding the limits after practice crash

Tom Coronel ended the first practice session on Saturday in third position, but unfortunately with damage to the front of his new Chevrolet Cruze after a crash at the second chicane at the Moulay El Hassan circuit in Morocco.

The ROAL Motorsport driver had moved up to third, just under 1.5 seconds down on pace setter Sébastien Loeb’s time in the 30 minute session, and was on another quick lap in the new Cruze TC1 car before he broke the suspension on a kerb and clipped the wall on the right side at the chicane on the back-straight, and was propelled across the chicane and into the wall on the other side, crashing out and brought the session to a premature halt.

“I touched the kerbs maybe a little bit too hard and then I was out of control,” said Coronel to TouringCarTimes.

“The brakes were getting long. They were getting a little bit too hot in the last chicane and that’s why I entered the chicane a bit too fast and hit the kerb too hard. I’d already had a warning on my display when I was driving out of the pits, I thought they’d be OK but I guess they were probably too hot when I was out of the pits.

“I broke the suspension when I hit the second kerb. I tried to keep it right, but I couldn’t as the car was on three wheels.”

After a short test at the Adria circuit last weekend, Coronel admits it feels like he’s having to learn the car during a live race weekend, with no time to properly test the recently delivered RML-built Cruze than the other competitors in the Championship.

“After just 70km of testing, I’m testing here,” he said. “Give me 800km under my belt and I’m there, but I have to know the limits of the car. Everything is going OK, I’m feeling fine, I wasn’t doing anything stupid, it’s just I touched the kerb and then there’s nowhere to go here. I feel OK with the car, I’m not in bad shape, the car feels fine, the set-up is OK, so we’ll be fine.”