Round 5 Croft Sunday18 September - Review

[Keethos 842]

Just a bit of an update from that weekend, a combination of lack of motivation, busy with work and pre-occupied with playing Destiny because they released some new DLC (geek I know) so not really got round to compiling any vids and writing anything up until now.

So back on the 18th September, it was the 5th round of the Toyota Sprint Series at Croft in Darlington. It was overall a very good day, beating Mike to 3rd in our class (out of 9 cars....good numbers this round, again no way of beating Lauren Blighton or Kevin Atkins but well done Kevin by for coming 1st!) with a time of 1:44.39 and coming 11th overall (out of 36 cars). Sadly this still puts me only 1 point behind Mike, even though I've beat him in 3 out of 4 rounds, but he's still ahead because I couldn't get anywhere near him at Blyton so it's all down to the final round at Snetterton!!!  So all was going well, my fastest lap was only on my 3rd run (which is impressive since I've never been to Croft before and only doing 2 sighting laps, 2 practice laps and a re-run because the timer wasn't working), but then on my 4th run, disaster struck......again......I decided to pick another fight with another bloody tyre wall

As I was pushing harder than before, I entered Tower a lot deeper and faster than before with a bit of trail braking, the car turned in fine but I could feel the back end start to step out progressively.  So I caught the drift and in the hopes to squash the drift, I tried to let off the gas a little but I think I ended up letting off the gas too much which resulted in a sudden grip of the tyres and the car just snapped around, throwing me backwards into a tyre wall  

From the sound I made and the impact I felt (along with a stiff neck and a battered thumb that felt like someone took a hammer to my nail) I would have imagined it was a pretty big crash, however after being able to drive back into the pits and inspect the car, it seems that I won this fight with only cosmetic damages. A couple of dents on the passenger side rear quarter and a big one on the boot lid, a shattered rear diffuser, cracked bumper, slightly bent front wing brackets, slightly bent tail pipe, general paint cracks/chips, partially damaged lower reversing light and obviously a bent rear crash beam which it seems did it's job very well to minimise structural damage.

After removing the remains of the rear diffuser, I drove the car around the paddock a bit to make sure everything was fine with the car and with the encouragement of my fellow 86 club members, I got back on my horse to shake off the crash and get my mind back on track while seeing if the car was truly alright. To get a second or two off my first lap time was a good sign that everything was OK, and I know where those few seconds went as I deliberately backed off down the fast Clark Esses into Barcroft before slowing right down for Sunny. This section is very very ballsy, you are reaching high speeds with plenty of hard things to hit that if you don't give it your all, you can easily loose seconds here but I wasn't bothered with times anymore at that point so I took it easy down the back in case the car wasn't alright.

The car since has been up on a ramp and we've had a quick look underneath for any signs of additional damage and luckily no further issues to report. The car has had a wheel alignment check after having the ride height raised and it would seem that the rear was slightly out but that could have been from when the coilovers were adjusted. Just need to find a body shop to sort the damages now but that'll probably wait until the new year now

But again all in all, a good weekend, even with this lil crash, Croft is an amazing circuit it's fast and technical, it's just a shame that there's plenty of things to hit and some harsh rumble strips as well as big divots at the end of some of the rumble strips which is always unnerving.  It was also great to see some new faces there and just in general more people competing in their GT86, I know I'm not the best advert for people who are worried about going on track but it was all my fault for pushing myself a lil too hard, it's still a great place to learn and get a feel of track driving without the worry of other drivers.  Just like my previous mishap at Lydden Hill (not during a sprint but a car show track time) this definitely hasn't stopped me from continuing what I really enjoy and really looking forward to the final round of the year down at Snetterton, if you're near by or fancy a drive, please do pop down to either spectate of if you're keen, join in and have some fun on track, don't feel pressured into posting record times as no one gets near Lauren and Kevin anyways  

Here's the video of technically my slowest lap and my fastest lap:

 

And here's my run where I crashed as well as a lap afterwards, still having some sideways fun at the end

 

[surrey86 352]

Great report, enjoyed that and the video. Looked like it snapped round pretty quickly.