Team Parker Racing endured a tough weekend in the Ginetta Junior Championship at Rockingham, but Chris Swanwick and Adam Bonham both battled to a pair of top-10 finishes in each race.
Swanwick took a seventh and an eighth place, and Bonham scored a seventh and a 10th. Raw novice Finlay Ratcliffe drove the team’s other car to 18th position in both races, running lap times just off the pace of the top 10.
Once again the battling was frenetic in the series for 14 to 17-year-old drivers, one of the most popular features of the British Touring Car Championship support package.
Swanwick made a monster start to the first race to vault from eighth to second, but soon began to suffer with a down-on-power engine. He struggled very badly on the straights and faded to an eventual eighth, just behind team-mate Bonham, who qualified seventh – best of the Parker trio – and recovered in the race after briefly running wide.
The team changed Swanwick’s fuel tank overnight and this eradicated the problem, but in the second race he had a collision on the second lap while battling for fifth, and was forced to fight back to seventh place. Bonham was running well but was taken off by a rival and finally placed 10th.
Ratcliffe suffered incidents too but did a good job to get to the flag and is learning all the time. This was just his second race meeting in cars and he had a very brief karting career.
Team Parker Racing’s Ginetta Junior team manager Tom Ferrier said: “We sorted out some handling issues from qualifying and all our drivers drove their socks off in both races. Overall it was a bit of a disappointing weekend. After the first round at Thruxton we thought we had good potential, but onwards and upwards. The cars are mainly in one piece and it’s just a week until the next round at Brands!”
Swanwick added: “Ginetta have helped us out and the team did a lot of work on the car after the first race. I couldn’t really do anything, so the important thing was just to get a finish and score points for the championship.”
The Ginetta Junior Championship again enjoyed live coverage of its second race at Rockingham on ITV4, and was streamed live on itv.com. The third round takes place this weekend, at Brands Hatch, Kent, on May 1-2.
