Successful weekend in Estoril
Press release no.4, 24. April 21:00, Estoril
Mato Homola has just finished his second racing weekend in TCR International Series. Whole weekend began much sooner, as we had testing on program on Wednesday.
We continued with the Free practice 1 on Friday. We wanted to test several new car settings, but the weather was against us and it started to rain just 5 minutes before the training. Track wasn’t wet enough for wet tyres but not dry enough for slicks. We adjusted at least the brakes for Free practice 2.
This was scheduled for Saturday morning. The weather was great and we were successful with the setup and first lap times were very promising. We have proven this in the Q1, where Mato made the third best time and continued to Q2.
And than success! Fastest lap from the 12 drivers in Q2: “I am so happy! It is unbelievable. When I got back to pits I knew that I was on the P1, but there was still 5 minutes left. But then it worked out! I got a Pole!” said Mato.
In the race 1 Mato had good start, despite Morbidelli going to P1. “I was very happy with my start, even though Morbidelli got over me.” Mato took his first place back immediately in the second lap. “I think, that Morbidelli let me overtake him, so he will had the advantage to ride close behind me and than attack.” And so it was. Up to the lap 12 Mato was in the lead keeping the distance to Morbidelli up to 1 second. Then he attacked really aggressively in the chicane, Mato was able to resist to this attack, but then he overtook Mato. “I had to drive really defensively, what is killing the tires and they did not worked from half of the race and then Gianni got over me.” Hard attack of Mato and Morbidelli was good for 2 Volkswagens from Leopard Racing, because they were able to get close to them and then even ahead of Mato.
“I fought as hard as I could, you can really see it on my damaged car, I really tried to keep at least third, but I was not successful. Anyway, I am really happy for the championship points and now I will focus on the race 2, as I start from the P10 and I will need to push forward.
Mato was focused on the second race: „I will try to slightly change my strategy and I will see, whether it will work out. This circuit is really aggressive for the tyres.“ Mato has moved to the rank 10 after the start. Therefore he said: „I need to work on my starts a but, there is still a lot of wheelspin.“ Mato went to P8 at the end, through Grachev and Oriola, but he wasn’t really happy.
„I tried a different strategy. My tyres were not new, so I wanted to save them for later, as they get destroyed really fast on this circuit. I didn’t want to push really hard from the beginning and wanted to wait for the second half, but maybe I was thinking too much about it and in a moment, I wanted to push they didn’t work any more. I’m a little disappointed, 8th position is not the best. But we have great speed, what we prove in the qualification.“ Mato was happy with the car as such: „We have managed to find a really good setup, which worked. It was much better than in Bahrain. I am little angry with myself, I wanted to drive more carefully, but it didn’t work out. The question is, what would happen, it I would push fully from the beginning. The points are there and that’s the most important.“
David Bari, the team manager after the race said: „We have collected loads of information during the testing and the weekend, what will be useful in the upcoming races. The cars are damaged from each side, so we will have a lot of work with them.
He adds: „We still have a lot to improve, but we showed, that we can have great pace. Mato’s qualification result is the best proof. Even Dusan has showed high tempo, but this weekend was simply not lucky for him.“
Mato is currently with 25 points at the 8th place of the championship. There is still 18 races to go, the game has just started. Mato shown us, that he can be really quick and that the others need to count with him.
The next race is SPA Francorchamps, from May 5. to 7. Mato is looking forward: „I really like the track in SPA and I hope, that it might work out, I had a great race here 2 years ago.
You can watch both races on YouTube channel TCR TV.
Results: http://tcr-series.com/index.php/events/item/circuito-estoril
Pictures for download: http://bit.ly/Homola_Estoril-race
Photo Credits: B3 Racing
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