The TCR Europe season concludes at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend, with a first-time tin-top champion being a certainty, as the finale comes down to three drivers.
Coronel has been racing touring cars since 2001, but this is the first time the popular Dutchman heads into a finale weekend in with a chance of winning the overall title.
The 51-year-old leads the standings by ten points over Belgian Kobe Pauwels, and could scoop the biggest prize of his more than 550-race touring car career.
18-year-old Pauwels, on the other hand, has entered just 14 touring car races and wasn’t even born until Coronel had already started racing in the European Touring Car Championship in 2004.
The other contender, also a Comtoyou Racing entrant, is Corsica’s John Filippi. The 28-year-old may have had a slow start to his touring car career, with top ten finishes a rarity in his first five years of trying, but in recent seasons Filippi has challenged more regularly at the front.
Filippi remains in contention not by virtue of wins (three) or podiums (six) but consistency – he is the only one of the title contenders to score in all races and has never been lower than seventh in the series’ race rankings.
This season, Pauwels has taken the most wins in the series, with five wins, and has been on a better run of form in recent races, with those five wins coming from the last eight races.
But Coronel has been consistent – with nine podium finishes out of the 12 races thus held – and but for a damper issue at Monza, the points gap would likely have been larger.
Although Filippi is very much an outside bet, he is still just 25 points adrift, with 90 up for grabs over the weekend.
The grid will be bolstered by the addition of RC2 Motorsport’s Rubén Fernández and TCR returnee Pepe Oriola.
The series’ most recent, and youngest-ever, race winner Ruben Volt will continue for a fourth event in a row, running the ALM Motorsport Honda Civic FL5, which is 30 kg heavier than any other car in the field based on the compensation weight system, with the Estonian carrying 40 kg this weekend.
Free practice takes place at 09:00 and 14:16 CEST on Friday (08:00 and 13:16 BST respectively), followed by qualifying and race one on Saturday at 11:30 and 17:55 CEST (10:30 and 16:55 BST) and race two on Sunday at 12:20 CEST (11:20 BST).