Let’s cut to the chase. Croft was the most stressful event of the year so far, for a multitude of different reasons. Whilst excited for my first ever pre-event testing session to be taking place, my enthusiasm was quickly shattered on the morning of the event, approximately 200 miles away at home. Upon trying to load the car onto the trailer to start the trek at approximately 5:30AM, the Citroen had managed to lock all doors and the boot, the car still fully running, for reasons only an almighty power could comprehend. We were unaware that the central locking in the car had not been fully disconnected. The result of this meant an emergency callout from an auto-locksmith (apparently they exist), and a few hours of waiting later, we hit the road up North.
We arrived in time for about 20 minutes of track time to spare (out of the originally allocated two and a half hours). Whilst I would then be going into the weekend with less practice under my belt that we would have wanted, this events of the morning had another unfortunate consequence. Heading into the weekend, we had opt to put on fresh tyres to give some extra grip to the car in the final two rounds of the championship. However, the characteristics of the Nankang NS-2R tyre in this championship meant that the tyres require a significant amount of ‘scrubbing in’, wearing the tread of the tyre much thinner than out of the factory, before it reaches it’s optimum grip level. Missing out on testing would mean that the tyres were at sub-optimum grip levels, remaining a constant throughout the weekend.
Every single session throughout the weekend, we struggled with pure confidence on the tyre, and would often quickly and suddenly break traction through corners that require maximum commitment. Ultimately, we had felt that we were extracting the maximum from the car, but it still wasn’t enough to fight for the positions we wanted to be in, sitting on the very edge of the top ten for all three races.
Alongside all of this, in true service-disaster fashion, the hotel in which we stayed had somehow deleted our weekend booking, and whilst there was space to stay on the Friday night, there wasn’t for the Saturday. A few angry phone calls and engagements later, the problem was surprisingly resolved, but continued to put additional stress on the weekend that could have really done with fewer issues.
Whilst Croft could be quickly brushed off as a weekend to forget, there are definitely positives to take forwards. Whilst the results were not exactly what we wanted, the track was brilliant fun to drive and there is plenty of data to analyse in preparation for the season finale, none other than the world renowned Silverstone race circuit. We are all beyond excited to give it our all in the last round of the series.
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