Round 7, Croft

Croft Circuit is a long way from East Sussex. It’s situated just south of Darlington and while I had visited once many years ago, my racing career had not taken me there up to this point. The track itself is a drivers favourite and I can see why; there are some very fast corners.

Between Anglesey and this meeting, we had some work done on the car to try and improve the power. It didn’t help. In fact, we seemed to be falling back on the straights all weekend, which made things difficult.

I was quickest in my qualifying session at Anglesey. This time however, I was over 1.4 seconds off the pace in my session and 26th overall. This meant I didn’t make the cut for the A race, but was starting on the front row for race 1B.

The top 5 are promoted to the A group, so that was my target. As we got underway it was obvious from the beginning it was going to be difficult and I started slipping back. Luck was on my side though, and when down in 7th place it started to rain. Despite the power issue the car was handling well, so I was able to start making my way through and ended up a close 4th.

That result put me onto the back row of race 2A, in 23rd place. It was still wet and grim, which was handy. Knowing I would be stronger in the slower corners, I got stuck right in. There was a fair bit of mayhem in front and we were under the safety car after 2 laps. I had climbed up to 14th by then, including overtaking 2 of my team mates, both around the outside, which was very satisfying! I jumped another 4 places during the first lap of the restart and had great fun battling for 8th thereafter. I lost out in the drag race to the line (of course!) and finished 10th.

The final race was even wetter and despite the visibility was loads of fun! While really trying hard to make up for the lack of straight line speed, I braked too deep at Sunny In one lap and ran wide across the grass. I was fighting almost all the way though and ended up 11th, which I was pretty pleased with.

Back to the drawing board before the final meeting of the year, at Donington Park.