JCTC: Tom Coronel Fuju round two race notes

Premature end to race Tom Coronel at Fuji

The a crash at the second round of the Autobacs All Japan GTC Series at Fuji meant an early end of the race for the GZOX Mugen NSX team of Tom Coronel and Daisuke Ito. In qualifying the Dutch - Japanese duo only managed an eleventh place, but were still the best Honda NSX runners. Victory at Fuji went to Masami Kageyama and Richard Lyons driving a Nissan Skyline.

All in all it was not quite Tom Coronel's weekend. "The Toyotas and Nissans were clearly faster than us here. Although they have the same restrictors as we have, they have a significantly larger engine capacity which gives them an outright horsepower advantage. Topspeed is everything here at Fuji and we clearly lack that in comparison to our opponents. A more positive note is that we were the fastest of the Honda runners this weekend", the Dutchman said.

Daisuke Ito took the start and gave it his all to keep at least his starting position. It appeared to be difficult and when he came in for his regular pitstop after 25 laps he was in 13th place. Especially the tyres had a hard time. "I jumped into the car with the idea to make up as many places as possible. The first one on my list was Hidetoshi Mitsusada, my former teammate at Nakajima Racing. That was relatively easy as he was also driving a Honda NSX. The next one was to be the Takata Dome NSX of Ryo Michigami and Sebastien Philippe. Just when I was behind Michigami and started to make my move he started to spin. I thought he would slide to the outside of the track, but in stead he moved to the inside. There was no way I could avoid him so we ended our race with a big bang. A shame it had to end like this but let's hope things will be better next time", Tom Coronel said afterwards.

The next race for Tom Coronel in the Japanese GT series will be in three weeks time at Sugo. However next weekend the Dutch driver race again at Enna Pergusa in the third round of the European Touringcar Championship.

The participation of Tom Coronel in the Japanese GT Championship is made possible by his Dutch sponsors : McGregor, Apex, Castrol, Bridgestone, Autobedrijf Beelen and Clifford. <pre> Results JGTC round 2 Fuji: 1 Kagayama / Lyons Nissan Skyline 2 Treluyer / Ide Nissan Skyline 3 Schwager / Orido Toyota Supra 4 Motoyama / Krumm Nissan Skyline 5 Hattori / Wakisaka Toyota Supra 6 Matsuda / Kogure Honda NSX

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