Should we be so concerned about Church?

Much of the post-weekend analysis of the BTCC’s visit to Thruxton has centred around the safety of Church corner, following three huge accidents for Nick Foster, Ollie Jackson and Simon Belcher, which all were able to walk away from unharmed.

Thruxton bosses and the MSA pledged to assess the safety of the corner in the days after the races, but also promised not to remove the character of the circuit.

So what, if anything, should be done to the fastest corner in UK motorsport? Well, it’s clear to me that a “one size fits all” wouldn’t work.

Belcher said a gravel trap would have helped scrub off some of the speed in his accident, and Jackson was also left bemoaning the fact that nothing slowed his Proton down before it hit a tree.

But double BTCC champion John Cleland tweeted to point out that a gravel trap would cause a “huge barrel roll” if the car went off sideways – and that’s exactly what happened with Foster’s BMW 125i.

After contact from Rob Austin, the car rotated a full 360 degrees before scaling the tyre barrier, and it’s highly likely that if a gravel trap was there, we’d have seen a barrel roll. Remember Fabian Coulthard at Bathurst? That’s what happens when a car goes off sideways at speed into a gravel trap.

We must also bear in mind that none of the accidents were the fault of the drivers involved. Jackson and Belcher suffered car failures, while the stewards ruled that Austin was at fault for Foster’s crash.

Incidents involving other drivers, and car failures, can happen on any circuit, at any time. They are part of the inherent risk of racing cars at high speed.

So whatever changes, if any, Thruxton and the MSA do make, it would be difficult for them to make the track safer for drivers in all types of accident.

Maybe we are guilty here of letting reputation get in the way of reality. Church is a fearsome challenge but the accidents weren’t due to the nature of the corner.

It’s effectively the BTCC’s Eau Rouge. Yes, it’s a challenge and yes, it’s dangerous, but all motorsport has that risk factor involved. And both fans and drivers would howl from the rooftops if either of those corners were sanitised.

Say, for argument’s sake, that Belcher had crashed in the same circumstances at turn one at Rockingham. Another super-fast corner taken in top gear, similar apex speed to Church, but a left hand turn instead of a right.

Would we then be having this discussion? Probably not – what possible changes could be made to a banked oval turn, with a concrete wall, and a grandstand directly behind?

As we saw with Jeff Smith at that corner in 2012, an accident there can be just as violent – and in that case, Smith’s Honda Civic was written off, which hasn’t happened with any of the cars involved at Thruxton last week. And I don’t recall any safety talk after that crash.

We’d all like to think we could jump in a touring car and do what the BTCC drivers do – but we couldn’t. We know the dangers involved – it says so on every motorsport ticket you buy – and we want to watch these drivers pushing to a limit we can only dream of.

One of the reasons us “normal” folk don’t race cars (talent aside) is we don’t have the ability to switch off and ignore the dangers involved. These guys do, they know the risks and with Church, I doubt most of them would have that corner any other way.