CROFT rounds 13, 14 and 15

Qualifying

Hot sunny conditions prevailed on Saturday during the morning test sessions, becoming even warmer for the half-hour qualifying session in the afternoon. Tom and the Arena Motorsport team worked through a number of different set-ups to find the optimum balance, but felt they never quite got the combination right. These problems, along with Tom encountering slower cars on his qualifying runs meant he ended up 5th fastest. He was certainly expecting more;

“ We’re all a little disappointed to be honest. I should have gone quicker. It’s been partly down to not finding a good balance with the car, but also I made a couple of mistakes. We changed the set up from this morning’s runs and expected to see a big improvement, but it never came. On two of my qualifying runs I caught slower cars at just the worst place on the track and then in the final run I braked fractionally later for Tower Corner and missed the apex. That was on my best lap and it cost me a few tenths of a second, so I think maybe I would have been a couple of places higher up the grid, but there’s no way I could have got pole. Not today. “

So 5th place and a start on the inside of the third row of the grid would await Tom on Sunday morning.

Round 13

The first race on Sunday was brought to a premature end after Mark Proctor lost control of his Vauxhall Astra and slammed into the tyre wall – destroying the barriers.

The red flag came out to end the race 5 laps early with Tom in 6th position.

After a decent start and a strong opening lap, Tom was putting pressure on Jason Plato in the SEAT. In turn, Tom was coming under pressure from Dan Eaves’ Honda Integra behind him. Tom locked up a front brake on lap 8, understeering wide through Sunny Corner and this gave Eaves a chance to get through. Dropped to 6th    place, Tom continued to push Eaves hard and was attacking, looking for a way past when the race was stopped;

“ I think I was quicker than Dan towards the end of the race. He was holding me up and I was planning a move to pass him when the red flags came out. He had got past me earlier when I was pushing hard to try and pass Jason in front. I made a mistake, braked a little too late and at this level that is all anyone needs to take advantage and get past. Our car was handling better than in qualifying, the balance is better now so we’ve moved in the right direction with the set up. “

Round 14

A fantastic reaction as the lights changed gave Tom a great start and he approached the first corner trying for 3rd place from his 6th place start. In the melee however, he was forced out wide to the left hand side of the track. He thought better of trying to brave it out around the outside of the corner and braked hard to avoid being pushed into the gravel trap. This forced him to relinquish a couple of places and at the end of the first lap Tom was in 5th place.

Four laps later, an incident occurred between the 3rd and 4th placed drivers. Plato and Eaves collided on the exit of the Chicane, promoting Tom to 3rd place. He now set about catching Colin Turkington in the Vauxhall Astra. Lap after lap he closed the gap and by lap nine, Tom got his Honda Civic right on the bumper of the Astra. Trying everything he could, Tom kept searching for a way through but it wasn’t to be. Turkington just held on and they crossed the finish line just 3 tenths of a second apart. So Tom climbed the podium for the second time this season, with him and the Arena team happy with the 3rd place result.

Round 15

The BTCC format presents a real challenge for the final race as the results are reversed to determine the starting position on the grid. This would mean Tom starting the race from 8th on the grid.

Avoiding any trouble on the opening lap is always important in the final race as there are inevitably cars at the front of the grid which possibly don’t have the pace of the cars coming through from the back. Tom managed to stay out of trouble and came round at the end of the first lap in 8th place. His car was now carrying success ballast from his 3rd place finish but that didn’t stop him catching and then passing Gavin Smith in the Astra. Diving down the inside at the final hairpin, Tom was up to 7th. Whilst he was making progress up the field, the much lighter SEAT of Jason Plato was also catching Tom. More efficient under braking, Plato got past him with a similar move at the final bend to the one Tom had used a lap earlier on Smith;

“ I could see Jason catching me quite rapidly. His car is some 70 kgs lighter than my Civic so I knew he would be quicker. I made it as hard for him to get through as I could, but it was inevitable he would pass at some stage.”

Tom then found himself coming under pressure from a charging Yvan Muller. The Frenchman got the better of Tom under acceleration out of Tower corner and despite Tom hanging on, running door handle to door handle for a couple of corners, he couldn’t prevent the ex-champion coming through.

Over the next few laps Tom ran with Muller, the pair of them closing in on Luke Hines in 7th place. Hines did his best to hold them up and with some defensive driving managed to do so for several laps as Tom described;

“ I was right on Yvan’s bumper and he was all over Luke. I was waiting for the pair of them to have an incident or for Yvan to force him wide and I could take advantage. The problem was that Luke was slowing us both down and so I was being caught by Colin Turkington and had to decide whether to attack with Yvan or defend from Colin. In the end I thought I had a chance at the last corner and gambled on a wide approach to get a better exit. Unfortunately for me, Colin anticipated that and got alongside under braking. Once someone’s down the inside of you at the Hairpin, there is nothing you can do, other than just blatantly hitting them. Colin and I have been racing very closely already today. It was always clean and fair, that’s how it should be. Anyway, Colin got past me and it stayed that way to the end of the race. The extra ballast had slightly changed the cars balance and it was not as good as in the earlier races. “

At the end of an action packed 15 laps, Tom had finished 9th, again scoring Championship points;

Croft had been a tough experience at times. The 3rd place and 2nd fastest lap of race two was a very strong performance and if the first race had not been shortened, who knows, possibly another good result would have happened there. Scoring points in all the races was pleasing, but Tom and Arena Motorsport will be aiming to improve on that at the next rounds. Those will be at Mondello Park in Ireland this coming weekend so not much rest following Croft.

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