Hope everyone has had a good weekend? Unfortunately ours wasn’t great at Croft results wise, although still great fun as always to be at the race track.
Qualifying went ok, we left the assembly area first and immediately put in two fast laps before the tyres started to fade away. This put us on pole at this point but there was still 20 minutes left. I knew I could go a little faster but not much and pitted for a second set of new front tyres, but unfortunately got slowed by traffic every time a tried to set a lap. This left us P4 for race 1 and P3 for race 2.
The first two corners are quite narrow at Croft and after getting a good run down to the first turn in race 1, I was then squeezed out and hit sideways at turn 2 dropping us back a couple of places. This was then followed by being hit sideways a further two times before the end of lap 1 dropping us back to 8th place. Sometimes Clio racing gets rough, so this sort of thing is to be expected from time to time. On lap 2 the red flags came out to repair some barrier damage at the chicane. This meant a restart but not back to original positions, so we were lined up 8th on the grid. With a good restart and places gained we were up to 5th by the end of the next lap and although pulling out all the stops to gain more places this is where we finished. The toughest race of the season so far, but great fun still!
Race 2 was looking good starting from 3rd, being on the inside was hopefully going to make the first turns easier. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be as I was pushed over the curb at turn 1, causing a puncture and ending our chances of a podium finish. After limping the car back to the pits for a new tyre we ended up a lap down which then ended all chances of scoring points.
We’ve now dropped back to second in the championship but only by 3 points and dropping our worst score we’re still leading by 4 points so still all to play for. We now have a bit of a break before Snetterton on 3/4 August but can’t wait for it!
Paul