4th Race at Croft Circuit - 3rd in Class
The CSCC Tin Tops series moved to Croft Circuit just of the A1 at Scotch Corner with a test day on Friday 21st July with qualifying and race on Saturday 22nd July. The weather forecast for race day was bad with thunder and lightning predicted by the BBC trusty weather service.
Our team using this information prepared by scrubbing in some wet weather tyres on the Friday in preparation for a very wet race. Testing was in the dry and the car performed well with no issues and driver Andrew Windmill loving his first visit to this flowing circuit. With rain falling as race day arrived the team left the wet weather tyres on the car and a compromise setting on the car assuming some wet running. Andrew attended the driver briefing at 9am at which point the rain had stopped and the high track temperature and light breeze dried the track sufficiently to not need the wert tyres.
Qualifying was due at 10am but the car needed to be in assembly for 9.45am it was a fast tyre change to our dry tyres to take advantage of the drying conditions. During the 30 minute qualifying the car went quicker and quicker as the track dried, drivers were pushing harder and harder to explore the grip and this was the same for our driver. Finishing 5th on the grid having been pipped by one tenth of a second on the last lap by a flying Clio, we were very happy to be on row three and hopefully out of any trouble in the first corner.
The race was at 1.45pm and the sun was out the track dry and not a storm cloud in site, thanks BBC for another accurate forecast!
A rather quick rolling start saw the Car Mats-UK AWS Racing Honda Civic Type R maintain its 5th place into the first bend and the first couple of laps. Andrew then moved up to fourth and quickly third after a competitor lost the use of third gear. A brief spell in second place was the best achieved before the quicker cars found their rhythm and we slipped to 4th place. The mandatory pit stop did not go to plan and a brief issued with the seat belts was topped off by a misinformed marshal who wanted the car to be stationery for one minute! You will see from the footage that this cost us quite some time until the car was released and we came out of the pits in a lowly ninth place.
Andrew put the hammer down and put a spirited second half drive in pushing the car to its limits and bringing it home in fifth place overall and third in class so some more silverware for the trophy cabinet.
We now start preparations for the next race at Castle Coombe Race Circuit on Sunday 13th August.