Photo:

Tom Chilton’s race day ruined by front damper failure

By

ROAL Motorsport driver Tom Chilton’s race day in Hungary didn’t go as planned, after the bonnet came loose on his Chevrolet Cruze in the first race, earning him a mechanical black flag, and then a front-right damper failure in the second race forced him to back off and hold on to the car just to make the finish.

After qualifying in seventh position on Saturday, after losing out in Q2 when he was caught out by a problem for Zengõ Motorsport driver Norbert Michelisz just ahead of him, Chilton’s weekend rapidly began to degrade when it came to Sunday.

In race one, a sluggish start, thanks in part due to a developing problem with the damper, saw him running behind team-mate Tom Coronel for the first few laps, but before he was able to mount a charge, he was called into the pits with a loose right bonnet catch threatening to lift it up during the race. After he rejoined, the best he could recover to was 14th, passing the TC2T class runners.

In race two, Chilton’s race seemed a lot quieter from the outside, sandwiched between José María López’s Citroën and Gabriele Tarquini’s Honda, but the 29-year-old said that it was a tougher race for him than it looked due to a major component failure.

“I had no front-right damper for the whole race,” said Chilton to TouringCarTimes. “It blew itself up, had zero oil left in it which meant I was only running on the spring and the roll bar, which is absolutely terrible to drive. It’s worse that it was a front damper, as every time I got on the throttle the vibration was so bad, I had to take my hands off the steering wheel, especially out of Turn 3 up the hill.

“It had started to go really bad at the end of race one, but it was completely gone in race two, which is why on my first few laps I was running wide at Turn 4, as I was going over the crest, landing on my front-right, but with no damper the splitter was hitting the ground and I got a massive bolt of oversteer and I was coming off the road, which is why I got a warning flag.”

Chilton’s points score keeps him in touch with the other Chevrolet drivers, but with Münnich Motorsport’s Gianni Morbidelli taking victory in the second race, the Italian has moved ahead of Chilton to seventh in the standings, one point ahead.