Race Report: Thruxton

DigiPlat Racing's 2022 season got off to a flying start at the CSCC Thruxton Thriller on April 23rd. But it was a weekend that was tantalisingly close to legendary, but ultimately delivered little.

Competing in three championships across the CSCC events, DigiPlat were out in the Liqui Moly Slicks Series, the TrackRoadRace New Millennium Series, and the Verum Builders Open Series. Thruxton's timetable consisted of 30 minute qualifying sessions for each series, and 40 minute races with mandatory pitstops. 

The day got underway with qualifying for the Open; an interesting challenge given it was Nathan's first ever laps at the notoriously fast Thruxton and the series mandates the use of road-legal tyres, rather than the fully-fledged racing slicks the car usually runs on. For this reason, the Open qualifying was treated as something of a test session by the team, with Mark gradually finding pace on his exploratory laps and Nathan managing to put the car 5th overall. 

Next, was the New Millennium qualifying. Again on road tyres, this series features an array of production-based saloon and sports cars, and is one of the CSCC's largest and most competitive grids. DigiPlat Racing aim to fight at the front of this championship, but it was another qualifying session in which the team focused on learning the circuit and the car's behaviour at different corners. Mark did his usual job of warming the tyres, before Nathan hopped in and put the team in 6th on the grid. 

Now for the main event; the Slicks Series. This is the championship DigiPlat Racing are focused on in the CSCC, and the one where we are allowed to use our preferred Goodyear slick tyres. The car is set-up for these tyres, and the result was immediately apparent: on only his second flying lap of the session, Nathan took almost 5 seconds off his previous best time on road tyres, and put the car on the front row. Pole position would surely have followed, had it not been for an issue with the fuel pipe that caused Nathan to park the car mid-session. 

So with the morning over, it was shaping up to be an epic afternoon of racing at the UK's fastest - and scariest - circuit.

Race 1 - Open Series

DigiPlat opted to put Mark in the car to start the race, but there was another added complication: it was a standing start! The DigiPlat Racing M3 is not designed with standing starts in mind, given its status as an endurance-spec GT car, so this would prove to be an interesting challenge with such a long first gear.

Mark made a decent getaway off the line, but - as predicted - the car bogged down in the second phase. Several cars swept past into turn one, but Mark got his head down and delivered some great overtakes to bring the car up to P3 by the pit window. Nathan hopped in and was immediately on the pace, and DigiPlat were able to undercut another car in the pitstop window. With the race time winding down, the gap in front to Brad Sheehan's similar BMW M3 was too great to overcome, so Nathan managed the gap behind to stablemate Kevin Clarke's M3 CSL. 

It looked like a solid P2 for the team, but alas it wasn't to be. A post-race 30 second penalty was applied for a pitstop infringement: the mandatory 120s pitstop time was missed by 0.2s by DigiPlat Racing. A great shame, but rules are rules. This meant Nathan and Mark dropped to P4 in the final standings, but with excellent pace in the car and two races left in the day, great things were expected.

Race 2 - New Millennium

The team were keen to build on a promising but ultimately disappointing result in the earlier Open Series race with the first outing of the year in New Millennium. This time it was Nathan who started the car, and like Mark earlier in the day, he struggled to get off the line, dropping a couple of places. But with the bit between his teeth, Nathan picked his way up the order to P2, and was catching the leader, Brad Sheehan. With Wells bearing down on him challenging for the lead, Sheehan dived for the pits, and Nathan got his head down to pump in some rapid laps in the hope of overcutting Sheehan in the pit window. It was looking like DigiPlat were heading for a win, until it all went wrong on lap 14.

Nathan was lapping the Aston Martin Vantage GT4 of Martin Addison, when Addison turned in on the DigiPlat M3 at the chicane, pitching himself into a 180 degree spin but damaging a suspension component on the front left of the M3 in the process. Nathan tried to carry on, but the damage was too severe and he had to retire the car.

A gut-wrenching end to a race that would surely have produced a podium, if not an outright win. It was a classic "leader tangling with traffic" incident: Addison hadn't seen Wells coming and got distracted by cars he was dicing with in front of him. He took his usual racing line, but Nathan was alongside him, trying to slide through to continue his charge. The stewards agreed it was a racing incident, and so DigiPlat Racing turned their sights to the main event: The Slicks Series.

Race 3 - Slicks

This was the focus for the team from the start of the day, and the one where they had the best chance to deliver a win. The car was fixed from the collission in Race 2, and Nathan was starting on the front row and had shown tremendous speed in qualifying. The gameplan was to run as deep into the pit window as possible to cover off a potential safety car, and for Nathan to build as big a lead as possible for Mark to protect in the latter stages.

It was a more familiar rolling start for the Slicks race, and Nathan timed his to perfection as the lights went out, diving around the outside of pole sitter Jamie Sturges' TCR Golf. Wells took off like a scalded cat, and had built a 2+ second lead by the end of the first lap. Nathan continued to dominate, and by lap 8, the gap to 2nd place Sturges stood at over 12 seconds. It was looking like a sure-fire win for DigiPlat, at long last...

But heading onto lap 9, disaster. As Nathan floored it out of the final chicane, the car suddenly lost drive. An anguished cry from Wells, and he had to park the car on the outside of turn one and spend a lonely 30 minutes watching the action from the wrong side of the barriers. It was initially suspected a broken driveshaft was to blame, but it turned out to be a faulty throttle pedal in the end.

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So a case of near and yet so far at Thruxton. So close to a P2 and two wins, but ultimately came away with a sole P4. But the car had great pace and is clearly capable of fighting at the very front of the championship in CSCC.

Next up is the Slicks series' second outing of the year, supporting the British GT at Donington on May 29th.