“You mention that this is my home track and I guess it is as I was brought up and spent my formative years and misspent youth in the North East, but amusingly I’d never been to
Croft and never came to watch a race here until we came with the BTCC in 1997,” the SEAT Sport driver recalled. “I remember it was new to the calendar and I remember very well that we came on a test before the first race with a view to finding out what was what.
“I was a new guy to touring cars and my voice was very small back then and it was interesting to come and see the effort that had been put in to get the circuit up to the scale needed to attract a series like the BTCC. However, it quickly became apparent that things weren’t as they should have been as there were some trees you could hit - but I thought it was ace. However the big voices of touring cars kicked off and we went on a circuit walk with 20 odd drivers of international repute saying ‘this isn’t right, that isn’t right’. I’d never experienced that before and overnight, they made the changes.
“It was apparent that Croft was going to be one of those special places on the calendar where they aren’t a big corporate entity – they are people. It’s always great to come back here year in, year out as they put on a great show and make everyone welcome in that Northern way – which I miss from having lived in this neck of the woods.
"It’s a great track that always produces great racing and I remember back in 1997 ending up on my roof at Clervaux, over the spectator enclosure in what I thought was going to be one of those incidents where I would just get a rear left in the gravel and lose a tenth of a second. However, I remember three or four seconds later – what felt like an hour – getting on the radio saying ‘Guys, I’m upside down and I have no idea where I am!’. That was something they had to change, the shape of the gravel traps – thanks to me – and I also had the biggest crash of my touring car career here driving for Vauxhall in 2000.
![Jason Plato in action during his debut BTCC season with the Williams Renault team back in 1997 [Pic credit: Still Photographic]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/335857.jpg)
