Croft 12th/13th September 2015
Images Courtesy of Jon Elsey
Henderson makes the most of his home advantage….
The Croft Circuit in North Yorkshire is a long way for many of the SuperCup drivers and it was a relatively small number of cars who made the trek north to race. For some of course it is their local circuit and Championship leader Alan Henderson is one of those. In his words, it is a very “technical” circuit which rewards local knowledge and Alan has a lot of laps of Croft under his belt!
For those who tested on the Friday before the meeting the weather yielded perfect conditions of bright blue skies and warm sunshine. Not so Saturday. The first competitive day of the weekend dawned cold and wet and the teams hurriedly applied wet settings to the cars.
Qualifying
The qualifying session was scheduled for late morning and by this time it had actually stopped raining. The Porsches in the previous session had begun to find dry patches and conditions looked set to improve further as the SuperCup session progressed. Sure enough almost the entire field set their fastest time on the final lap of the session as the track continued to dry. The only exception to this was JJ Clements who somehow managed to set the fastest lap of the session on lap 4 to claim pole.
A number of drivers were unexpectedly lower down the order. Returning 2014 Champion Abbie Eaton could only manage fourth on the grid while Jonathan Greensmith and Liam Murphy were down in sixth and eighth. John Davies who had a very strong showing last time out at Oulton Park was down in twelfth.
Race 1
Once qualifying was over the rain began again and it looked inevitable that the race in the afternoon would take place under wet conditions. In fact the rain stopped and the track began to dry at just the point where it was too late to make major setup changes. The race began on a drying track with a dry line in places but also plenty of standing water offline and some very deep puddles waiting to catch the unwary.
Off the line the pack went down to the first corner roughly in grid order but as usual at Croft the tightening nature of Hawthorn Bend caused problems and there was contact and a couple of cars were turned around or lost it on their own. The major loser from the incidents was John Davies who suffered a crumpled bonnet making it difficult to see. This led to another spin and retirement later in the race.
Meanwhile those at the front headed down through the Jim Clerk esses with pole sitter Jonathan Clements leading from Alan Henderson. As the front runners reached Sunny In Abbie Eaton discovered some deeper than expected puddles on the outside of the circuit resulting in a half spin that dropped her to 14th place. She mounted a comeback drive over the course of the race eventually fighting her way up to fifth at the flag.
JJ Clements manage to keep Henderson behind him up all the way until lap 10 but he never managed to build a gap. When JJ hit a puddle and ran slightly wide Henderson was waiting to move into the lead eventually winning by 13 seconds, which was surprising given how close the first 10 laps had been. Jonathan Greensmith followed them home in third having recovered somewhat from his poor qualifying.
Race 2
Sunday was a complete contrast in weather terms with the warm sunshine making a welcome return and the track in perfect condition for racing.
Race 2 was a lights to flag victory for Alan Henderson with Jonathan Clements giving chase but slipping gradually further behind, eventually crossing the line over 9 seconds down. Not quite as far behind was Jonathan Greensmith who spent the whole race in third. Behind him there was a close battle for fourth between Liam Murphy, Abbie Eaton and Paul Sheard who swapped places several times before finishing in that order.
John Davies had had to repair both ends of his car overnight after accident damage in Race 1 and started from the back of the grid in 17th. His efforts and the drive to 10th place earned him the Driver of the Meeting award.
Race 3
At the front, Race 3 was essentially a rerun of Race 2 with Alan Henderson taking victory from JJ Clements, but behind them there was an intense battle for third between Liam Murphy, Jonathan Greensmith, Abbie Eaton and Paul Sheard. This battle ran for the entire duration of the race with positions swapping constantly. To some extent this allowed the leading duo to pull away as the protagonists slowed each other up, but it was probably some of the closest racing seen in SuperCup all season. They took the flag with Paul Sheard leading from Liam Murphy, Jonathan Greensmith and Abbie Eaton. However, after the race Paul was awarded a five second penalty for infringing track limits which promoted Liam to the final podium position.
On the last but one lap of the race Alan Henderson posted a lap time of 1.38.264, which is the quickest ever time around Croft by an MX5 Mk3!
