Race 1 was looking good to be dry, but as we were coming to the green flag, it started raining. It wasn’t too hard hard, like a heavy drizzle. Enough to dampen the track slightly but not enough to stop for rain tires. At the start, I got my right-rear on the apex kerb at turn 12 and nearly spun. I could see the car behind me did the same thing and wasn’t so lucky. We tip-toed our way around the track, and coming up to 10A at the end of the long straight, I consciously started braking far earlier than I expected I needed to.
I had been complaining of too much rear brake bias since I got this car last year, but we’ve been kicking that can down the road, and today it bit me. It helped yesterday; in the rain you’re not braking as hard, so there’s less weight transfer to the front tires. But with slick tires on a moist track it just leads to massive instability, and as soon as I hit the brakes the car swapped ends on me. At 125mph. I had slowed down to 80mph by the time I hit the concrete wall. Amazingly, I didn’t hit anyone going through the chicane, although one car did spin trying to avoid me. I was uninjured.
We didn’t have enough spares to repair the car for race 3. But I should be able to scrape together enough cash to get it back together for the next race in 3 weeks. All the damage is isolated to that right-rear corner, plus a new sidepod and gearbox cover.
All in all, my performance yesterday is a big positive to take out of the weekend. I think people around the paddock noticed. A crash like this had to happen at some point, and it could have been much worse. I just wish I could afford to carry a larger stock of spares, and bring a professional mechanic to the track to fix things quickly.