Photo: WTCC Media

Unknown brake fluid problem scuppers race one in Japan for ROAL

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ROAL Motorsport suffered a cut-short race one at Twin Ring Motegi when both Tom Coronel and Tom Chilton spun off at Turn 5 on consecutive laps due to a brake problem, which is yet to be identified.

Chilton had started tenth and Coronel 13th and were working their way forward in the race. Tom Coronel was chasing down Nicolas Lapierre’s Lada Vesta, when the Dutch driver slid off the circuit at Turn 5, spinning around and clouting the barriers with the rear of his Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1, which required significant patching together for race two.

“I just thought not the front or that’s going to be an expensive one,” said Coronel to TouringCarTimes. “So I turned the steering wheel so I could hit it with the rear. I was already saying to the guys “the brakes are going down, the brakes are going down” on the lap before.”

Team-mate Tom Chilton was affected by the same issue just a lap later and narrowly avoided Campos Racing’s Hugo Valente as he headed into the same corner.

“Going into my fifth lap my brake pedal went completely and utterly to the floor,” Chilton told TouringCarTimes. “On lap four I was pumping the pedal three times on the way to every braking zone, I was thinking it was like the end of Marrakech and I’m only on lap four. After pumping it down that straight four times I hit the brake expecting something and there was absolutely nothing, and I had to dodge Hugo (Valente) so I didn’t whack him.”

The team tried to fix the problem for race two, but Coronel still suffered in the race with issues, but due to the high rate of attrition, finished the race in seventh position behind his team-mate.

“In race two we cleared the brakes, but it was still the same after four laps and I was just trying not to push the brakes,” added Coronel. “I was not racing, it was survival. Result-wise, I’m reasonably happy to catch some points, but in qualifying we ****ed up, otherwise we could have gone for the reverse grid. That’s all we are aiming for, as at the moment the Chevrolet is the car which is filling up the field.”