Mat’o Homola left the TCR International Series meeting in Spa-Francorchamps rueing the missed opportunity to score a podium finish, with the B3 Racing driver collecting a pair of fourth-place results at the circuit.
Homola has now taken three fourth-place finishes in the 2016 campaign, and the Slovakia racer left Belgium still looking to secure his first podium in TCR.
The SEAT racer believes that he had the pace to be at the front with team-mate Dušan Borković, who took the team’s second pole position in a row following Homola’s pole in Portugal.
“I always want to win, but there has been good progress from Bahrain to here,” said Homola to TouringCars.Net. “I had a bad qualifying and had some cancelled laps, so I could have been second and on the first row with Dušan.”
Homola rued a mistake in the second race which cost him a podium finish, as he instead had to settle for fourth behind the trio of Leopard Racing Golfs in front.
“In the second race I started from fifth and I wanted to be on the podium for sure, because I had better tyres. I knew that I have good pace in the races, and I showed it in the first few laps and I wanted to be in front of [Antti] Buri or the Volkswagen guys, but they were defending well.
“I overtook Buri and two corners after some stones or gravel from [Stefano] Comini’s car destroyed my right window and front window, so I was a little bit confused. I was looking and I made one mistake – one mistake in the whole race, and Buri overtook me again. I’m really sad about it, because I had the pace for third place, but then at the end I couldn’t attack because of degradation of the tyres.”
Homola lies eighth overall in the drivers’ championship after Spa, leading the B3 Racing trio on 49 points. Despite that, Homola was left to rue the opportunity to score more substantial points with a podium finish.
“There is a big difference between the podiums and the others, and when you are first you have a lot of points,” added Homola. “It’s all about the strategy with the tyres and to push maybe in one of the races.
“We have made good progress, because we showed our pace in qualifying and in the races it’s really good. In the second race I was the fastest SEAT, so there are positive things. I wanted to be on the podium, but it’s a step-by-step process.”