Mat’o Homola bounces back from practice problems to put Campos Chevy into Q2

After a frustrating few practice sessions, Slovakian driver Mat’o Homola qualified his Campos Racing Chevrolet Cruze TC1 in 11th position at the Slovakiaring, just missing out on tenth position and the opportunity to start the second race at his home track on pole position by just three-tenths of a second.

A brake failure in second practice was discovered to be the cause of the handling issues with the car which had plagued him throughout Friday and Saturday’s practice sessions, and the team were able to replace them for qualifying which gave the 20-year-old the chance to shine.

“We had problems in three sessions and we didn’t know what the problem was,” said Homola to TouringCarTimes. “Then we found out it was the rear brake which locked after a few metres after the start of the session. The guys from Campos did a great job to repair it before qualifying.

“Before qualifying I hadn’t done any good laps so I haven’t done anything about set-up or corner speed, so it was a big risk, but the result is really, really great.”

Qualifying in 11th position means he will start from that position for both races, but with WTCC race winners such as Mehdi Bennani, Norbert Michelisz, Tom Coronel, Stefano D’Aste and Tiago Monteiro all starting behind him, the Slovakian was still happy with the result.

“I tried a lot to get tenth and get pole position for race two, but I didn’t know the limits of the car. I tried to brake a little bit later to be a little bit faster, but sometimes I was braking too late, I also tried different gears to reduce the wheel-spin.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity and for this experience, even to be here in the middle of the field and to fight against to greatest drivers in the world, and it’s really nice to have some great drivers behind me.”