Smith misses out on making racing return
Former British Touring Car Championship driver Jeff Smith is near a racing return after his serious injuries sustained at Croft last year, just missing out on a Thruxton comeback appearance.
Smith was involved in a multiple car pile-up during qualifying for the 2017 Croft BTCC round and sustained concussion as well as multiple chest injuries and extensive shoulder injuries.
Smith intended to make his return in the Super Mighty Minis last weekend and had a medical on the friday before hand with a view to renewing his racing licence but the formalities could not be completed in time.
“We’ve made quite a lot of progress in the last month or so on the recovery side of things since the Croft accident last year,” Smith said.
“I did a trackday three weeks ago here, but then went on holiday for a couple of weeks so it was all a little bit tight and unfortunately ran out of time to get the licence renewal medical sorted in time.”
Smith confirmed that his shoulder is not fully recovered and that his concussion impacted him until recently.
“The shoulder’s probably back to about 70 per cent I would say,” Smith said. “The concussion side of things has taken quite a lot longer than I had anticipated it would, up until about a month ago I was still suffering with that.
“I seem to have turned a corner on that now and we’re making good progress.”
● Smith not racing proved a stroke of good fortune for his partner, Super Mighty Minis points leader Jo Polley. Her car suffered an overheating engine in qualifying but was able to switch to the spare car that Smith was going to use to take two fifth places.