Early bath
2021 Club Enduro Championship.
Round 2, Croft.
It was a disappointing return to Croft, our second visit north in two weeks, although at least it was sunny this time. We had several upgrades to try out for this meeting, including a roof, so were hopeful of getting closer to the front.
I had a couple of clear laps in qualifying and managed to get us 5th in class, 37th on the grid. They weren’t the best laps I had ever driven, but I did set two times very close to each other, so that was my pace! The track was a lot hotter than during our previous visit with SuperCup, which contributed to everyone running slower times than expected.
Alex was first man in for the race. He had a great start and jumped us up to 3rd in class, but then a big crash at Sunny In bought out the red flags. There was a delay as the barrier was rebuilt, before a full rolling restart.
This is where it all started to go wrong. The red lights didn’t go out, indicating that the starter was not happy with the formation. The procedure then is to drive round and stop at the grid to do it all again. However, the front cars kept racing on despite the red lights remaining lit. Rather than stopping the race to sort it out, the organisers simply turned out the red lights after a couple of laps and let that be the race start!
As you can imagine, this caused a lot of confusion further down the field as cars were half racing, not sure if they were allowed to overtake each other or not. Subsequently, when the lights did go out, there were cars everywhere and unfortunately Alex got caught up with another car, causing race ending damage. Thankfully he was okay.
It turned out to be a race of attrition as others fell by the wayside, so I am confident we could have scored that first podium. As it was, we packed up early and set off on our long drive home. Pretty disappointing.
Alex was fine though, and amazingly calm. I however wasn’t so calm! The car is currently undergoing the work needed and I’m confident we’ll be in contention again come Brands Hatch. Bring it on!
