All drivers who qualified but did not race yesterday will receive a 50% refund.
Photo courtesy of Mark Werrell.
This is a copy of an email sent to all CSCC and JEC Championship members this afternoon.
We hope those of you that were at Snetterton have made it safely back home despite the awful weather.
The meeting was abandoned yesterday afternoon having completed just one race, due to rain. Actually ‘rain’ is an understatement, more on this later. We would like to thank those drivers unable to race yesterday and the fantastic Snetterton Marshals, officials and staff for their patience and understanding, we haven’t had a single complaint or cross word about the situation. The club has of course already paid for the circuit and ancillaries, plus MSUK fees for every competitor that qualified and therefore has the right to retain entry fees, however, as we have often said, we are a ‘club of members’ first, a business second. Over the years we have been careful with your funds, building a reserve sufficient for the rainiest of days. Whilst we could never have anticipated the 2020 ‘storm’ that is Covid, let alone the biblical precipitation we endured yesterday, we believe it is the still right thing, to give drivers who qualified but did not race on Sunday, a 50% entry refund. This will happen automatically this week, please be patient during this time as it is a lengthy, manual process. Hopefully this will go some way towards the disappointment of not being able to race and gives you the freedom to choose where and when you race, rather than forcing your hand, had we issued a credit.
As a positive, Saturday was a successful days racing with a full paddock and although drizzle made an appearance on a couple of occasions, it allowed all races to take place.
Photo courtesy of Tony Harman.
As already mentioned, Sunday was a disaster in the afternoon. The morning qualifying session and one race before lunch were dry. At lunchtime the heavens opened, the media centre was flooded and water rose up through the floor in race administration, whilst the pit lane became a small river, carrying flags and contents of garages downstream. According to the website Weatherquest, nearby East Harling (4 miles from the circuit) had 160mm (more than 6 inches) of rain yesterday - that's a quarter of a the total year's annual rainfall! A rain station 400 metres from the circuit recorded that the first downpour lasted 44 minutes and 73mm (around 3 inches) fell during that time.
The grass run off areas all around the track were dry like concrete and as a result the rain ran off and onto the track bringing with it all sorts of debris. Large areas of track were therefore submerged and had to be pumped dry into water bowsers.
Photo courtesy of Mike Heath
Once the track had been cleared of water, it then had to be cleared of the debris. The sweepers were put into force together with the valiant Snetterton Marshals, setting to with brooms.
This all took until 4 o’clock by which time the club and the Clerks had worked out a revised timetable to get all drivers shortened races. The track was almost ready, to allow us to restart, when another deluge hit the circuit.
There would have been no way that we could have cleared the water again, in time to allow racing to restart, so the difficult, although obvious, decision was taken, to abandon the meeting. This wasn’t a case of ‘elf ‘n’ safety gone mad, but a very real risk of injury had cars hit the very deep puddles, both on track and off it. In addition our Marshals and all of you were soaked through, with many drivers already having left the circuit. We are confident that short of raising the track on stilts, no realistic amount of drainage could have coped with such a volume of water.
Professional photos are available to view, courtesy of David ‘where’s the lifeboat?’ Stallard (please support David by buying his photos): https://www.davidstallardphotography.com/ClassicSportsCarClubCSCC/CSCC-2020
Full results from the weekend are here: https://www.tsl-timing.com/event/203364 as a tip, click on ‘view pdf book’ for the detailed results breakdown, that includes your pit stop performance.
Our sincere thanks go to everyone who tried so hard to get the meeting going again but to no avail. We look forward to seeing you next month at Donington Park on 26/27 September.
Kind regards,
Hugo Holder and David Smitheram, CSCC Directors, on behalf of the CSCC Committee.
