Dutch racer Tom Coronel makes the rounds. Coronel and his brother, Tim, will race just about anything at any time, including the odd Dakar run. When he’s not hopping in a GT car or headed off road, Tom makes his living as a touring car driver in the World Touring Car Championship with a sidejob as a social media maven. He famously got docked a few thousand dollars for pulling off a Facebook Live session from the cooldown lap of qualifying for the WTCC race on the Nurburgring earlier this year, but last weekend’s touring car race at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan proved more troubling for Coronel and his Roal Motorsports Chevy Cruze. Coronel has won two races this year—no small feat for a privateer squad against four factory-backed teams—but an overrev of his Cruze’s 1.6-liter engine during free practice left his Roal mechanics with a broken engine and just two hours to swap in a replacement before qualifying.
Luckily, touring car engines are small enough that they’re fairly easy to work on—compared to, say, a mid-engined prototype race car anyway—and the Roal wrenches managed to completely swap out the engine with enough time to test the car at idle a bit before sending Coronel out for testing. As most Bangshifters well know, things don’t always go according to plan, though. There was no fairy-tale pole position for Coronel, who soon discovered the engine was underpowered for whatever reason. Coronel started last on the grid and finished last of the classified cars, but his crew managed to find some pace for the second race of the weekend, where the Dutch driver bested a handful of cars. It wasn’t much of a result, but some races go better than others.
