Sounds similar to my experiences there, apart from your car breaking down.
The first time I was there was for my first ever track day (talk about throwing myself in at the deep end!). There was a time attack scheduled in a week or two so there were a lot of seriously quick cars there.
My second time I went, there were quite a few red flags and the circuit was closed for an hour and a half just as I was going to go back on after lunch because an old golf smashed into the barrier. An astra had a smash which set it's airbags off, a kit car smashed into the barrier breaking its suspension and an Audi span and went head first into a barrier and those were only the ones I could see from the spectator areas!