More on Croft...

It seems some of the press might be a little misleading...

I picked this response up from the racingworld.com site:

Via e-mail:

I am as passionate about racing as anyone and as a pilot have seen the same noise/danger issues arise from people moving next to small airports over and over again. I was springloaded to really trash the plaintiffs in the Croft case. Then I looked up the judgment. The Croft article is at best misleading and at worst close to fraudulent.

Croft has only fairly recently started to ramp up their usage. The article leads you to believe that racing at Croft has been active since 1928 and that really isn’t the case. In fact, for instance, “Between 1982 and 1994, apart from rallycross (the racing of modified production cars on a mixture of sealed and loose surfaces) on a small part of the circuit for less than 10 days a year, and some engine testing during some of the period, there was no motor racing at Croft.”

The other misleading and really pretty damning fact is that “The Claimants' objections are not to the car and motor-bicycle racing fixtures which amount to about 20 (N1 and N2) events each year (over approximately 45-50 days); but to the noise from the circuit's other activities, in particular Vehicle Testing Days and Track Days (when members of the public drive vehicles at speed all day) at noise levels which reach N2-N4 levels.” Now I don’t really know what N2-N4 levels are, but they’re apparently higher than what the racing produces, which, in fact, the plaintiffs aren’t contesting.

Bottom line, the plaintiffs aren’t trying to stop the racing and the track has only recently become active as the result of development by a multi-millionaire investor.

The judgment is at http://www.richardbuxton.co.uk/v3.0/?q=node/334

Nick Tulloh
Durham, New Hampshire