There’s no hiding from it, we scored an own goal at Croft.

We arrived at the North Yorkshire track with a good record of success there and off the back of another race win last time out, so our confidence was high.

Of course, we’d never run the Leon TDI at the bumpy Croft circuit before, and with the venue’s wide variety of corners and surface changes, finding the right set-up was going to be the first challenge.

But with 12 rounds of the 2008 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship under our belts, we knew what faced us.

We made a lot of adjustments in the two free practice sessions on Saturday, which is normal, and went into qualifying. I qualified 3rd – which I was quite pleased with, as I was carrying 36 kilos of success ballast.

Only Fabrizio Giovanardi had a heavier car, and with nine kilos more he was way back in 12th. Perfect. My team-mate, Darren Turner, qualified on pole and although he was 36 kilos lighter than me, I was only two-tenths of a second slower. We looked in good shape for race day.

The weather forecast was for early rain on race day, and it was spot on. We didn't anticipate any problems - in fact, because of all the spray, being at the sharp end of the starting grid was going to be even more of an advantage. With our main rivals struggling, this was the ideal opportunity to close the gap.

It was raining so heavily in Race 1 that we had two formation laps before lining up on the grid for 10 minutes, just for us to see where the worst of the standing water was.

On the run down to Clervaux, the first corner, I gently squeezed the brakes and became a passenger. The front wheels locked up, the engine cut out, the power steering stopped working and I skated off into the gravel trap.

I got towed out and started the race 25th and last from the pit lane. On the opening lap of the race, Darren did exactly the same thing at Tower Bend – this time driving through a field to get back onto the track.

There was something seriously wrong with our brakes and unable to slow the car down for the corners without a re-enactment of Torvill and Dean, we both finished way down the order.

The problem laid with our development brake pads. They work well in the dry, but it never occurred to us that they wouldn’t work in the wet. But that’s what you get when you don’t do any testing. The front brakes were too grippy and despite putting all the bias we could on the rear, there was no back brakes at all.

So, we’d gone from the front of the field to the back field in the first lap. And to make matters worse, Giovanardi had finished 4th.

We expected the conditions to remain wet for Race 2, but it didn’t – which was a blow, because we went out on a full wet set-up. That’s basically soft springs, no roll bar and low camber - everything you don’t want on a dry track. But at least we’d changed the brake pads!

Our diesel package continues to spring really tough technically challenges.

We’re not on top of the Leon TDI yet, and in Race 2 the car was oversteering badly and wheel-spinning everywhere. I tried braking early, accelerating later - nothing worked. Merely staying on the black stuff meant I had to back off the gas. Our lap times were awful and I finished 8th, three places behind Giovanardi and one place ahead of Darren, whose car was doing exactly the same as mind.

With both our cars finishing between sixth and 10th positions, the law of averages suggested that there was a good chance that me or Darren, and both if number nine was selected, would start on the front row of the grid for the third and final race. The worst scenario would be if six or seven was randomly selected, as we’d have to start in the positions we’d finished the previous race. And guess what? Luck wasn’t on our side and number seven was picked.

By now it had stopped raining – and I have to take my hat off to all those spectators that weathered the storm and were still on the banks watching the races.

I lived in the North East for 12 years as a boy and went to King’s School in Tynemouth, so Croft is my local circuit. If work didn’t keep me down south, I’d live back up there tomorrow – and that comes from a bloke how spent three years living in Monaco and didn’t like it. A lot of family and friends always come to support me at Croft, and I wanted to end a frustrating day on a high, for them as well as me¿but it wasn’t to be. In fact, it just got worse.

I tried to overtake Colin Turkington on the inside of the Hairpin at the end of lap 2. We touched, I rode up the side of his BMW, balanced on two wheels and came crashing down to earth with a bang.

I thought my race was over – the Leon TDI must have suffered broken suspension. It didn’t sound too good, so I came into the pits for the mechanics to take a look.

Amazingly, everything seemed still attached, so I rejoined the race - but there was an awful racket coming from the front, so came back into the pits again for the team to check again. To save time I didn’t stop at my pit box but instead drove slowly passed the team. They said it looked okay and to carry on, so I did. We really needed those Manufacturer points, especially as Darren’s race was soon to be over, as he would be punted off into a gravel trap – ironically exactly the same one I’d be in before the start of Race 1.

So I finished the third and final race way down the order again, and to make matters worse Giovanardi won.

Race day at Croft was a disaster, and we’ve only got ourselves to blame. Some days you win, some days you lose. We now have to make sure we’re a lot stronger in the second half of the BTCC.

We now have a six week break before the next race at Snetterton. We’ve done 15 races and we’ve reached the halfway point in the series. We’re 67 points behind Vauxhall in the Manufacturers’ standings and I’m 4th, 46 points behind Giovanardi in the Drivers’ Championship.

It’s going to be very difficult to claw back all those lost points, but we’re going to try. I sense a great sporting comeback. There is a title waiting to be won, and as a team we have it within ourselves to win. We have to attack the second half of the series and make sure we’re paid back in full for all the development work we have done with the Leon TDI in the first half. I believe we can do it. But we cannot have another disaster like Croft.

The best part of the Croft race weekend happened on the Friday night – at the Marton Country Club in Middlesbrough.

My best friend, Rob Smedley, had a very special event on. We met in 1997 when he was a race engineer at Williams Renault and I joined the team for my first BTCC season. We just hit it off straight away. Like me, he’s from the North East and he was Best Man at my wedding.

Rob and his wife Lucy have been through a lot of heartache in the last twelve months – and right now they should be celebrating their daughter Minnie’s first birthday. Sadly there were some problems and Minnie didn’t make it through birth. But she still had a great birthday party, as her mum and dad organised a special event to raise money for SANDS, the Stillbirth And Neonatal Death charity. It was a very emotional night.

I was honoured to MC the event and help out with the auction. 450 people attended the event and they raised almost £50,000 on the night.

Rob is Felipe Massa’s race engineer, so he managed to get some mega Ferrari F1 team items. Michael Schumacher’s overalls went for over £7,000, Felipe Massa’s overalls, Rubens Barrichello’s crash helmet and a skiing holiday in France all went for over £3,000 apiece.

And by the looks of some of the guests who came to Croft the following day, the party must have gone on well into the night. But we all know you can’t have a quiet night out in the North East – and they can certainly party an awful lot harder there than they can in Monaco!