BTCC R4 – THRUXTON: HIGH SPEED AND HANGING ON AROUND THRUXTON
The high speed nature of Thruxton has left Scott Sumpton looking forward to the rest of the year!
A weekend of holding on for Scott at Thruxton. It was Scott's first time at the infamous Thruxton race circuit based in Hampshire and the track certainly lived up to his expectations. It is by far the fastest and 'scariest' track in the UK with an average speed of 110+ mph! This meant Scott had to have lots of spare pants to change into over the weekend.
In FP1 and FP2 Scott was just trying to get to grips with the track and get used to holding onto the car at the fast speed corners. This proved to be very difficult in lots of different ways, of course Scott had done lots of laps on his simulator at home prior going to the track but it is completely different in real-life. Scott and his engineer Tom worked together massively in both practices to try and get the perfect balance of the car for qualifying. This for Scott was for not too much understeer and enough oversteer to point the car in the right direction and power out. In the end they found a nice setup which Scott was confident in going into qualifying with.
Scott was in group one for qualifying which was full of top drivers. Going into qualifying Scott was confident in what he had learnt in FP1 and FP2 and was ready to put that to good use. However the track conditions said otherwise. From FP2 to qualifying, the track temperature was up by 11°c which changed things more than predicted. There was way too much front end grip and then nothing on the rears which meant the balance which was found in the practices had disappeared. This meant Scott was slower than his practice times from the morning and ended up qualifying P18. Although frustrated with the qualifying time he put in, he was more than determined to fight his way forward on the Sunday.
In Race One Scott got a mega start and was sitting in P17, but unfortunately on the opening lap of the race fellow competitor Andrew Watson hit the tyre barriers coming out of the last chicane and bought them into the middle of the track. Sadly this meant Scott had nowhere to go and tried to avoid them as quickly as possible but unfortunately clipped the too causing damage to his car. Scott carried on for most of the race but with the damage to his car it affected the overall performance and Scott had to sadly retire.
Race Two was more promising and the balance was back in the car which meant it was nice and 'racey'. Scott got another great start and was battling the whole of the race with Daryl and Chris getting stuck in and in the end had to settle for P18.
Race Three bought a lot more action to the table, with another mega start Scott was racing in 15th position for most of the race. He was taking the battle to his more experienced team-mate, Chris Smiley, and was pushing him round for the whole race. With 6 laps to go the safety car was deployed as Tom Chilton's' Hyundai was parked in an un-safe position at the exit of T1. After the safety car went in Scott was eager to move up the order but with cold rear-tyres he sadly lost the back of the car at 110mph going through Noble. This was extremely frightening for Scott but he managed to get it back onto the track and was able to get it back to P16 to finish off the day.
Overall it was a very tricky weekend of learning, but Scott gave it his all and pushed the car and himself to the limit in every single session!
