Ginetta Junior Championship points leader Jake Hill increased his advantage at the head of the driver standings to nine points at Croft Circuit this afternoon, Sunday, 20th June, with his second win of the weekend – the Tollbar racer’s first ‘double’ of the season.
Aside from his two race wins at the North Yorkshire venue, Hill also secured both pole positions this weekend, the fastest lap in each encounter and a new lap record of 1m40.180 seconds. Heading into a seven week break from action over the summer, the Goudhurst-based driver couldn’t have wished for a better conclusion to the first half of the 2010 campaign.
“I got every point I could this weekend – two fastest laps, two poles and two wins, it couldn’t have been any better”, said Hill, “It’s great to have done the double, we finally managed to get the win on Saturday as well as Sunday so I’m really, really pleased.”
Lining up on pole position with chief title rival Tom Ingram alongside, Hill made a reasonable start to round 10 – screened live across the UK on ITV4 – but the Hillspeed driver’s launch was much better and he shot into an early lead with Hill managing to keep Louise Richardson at bay into Clervaux.
With great drive out of the chicane, Hill closed on Ingram into Tower Bend and produced a neat pass at the right-hander to take the lead. It was short-lived though when Ingram hit back immediately through the Jim Clark Esses.
Serving up the best of racing action, the lead pair diced hard ahead of Richardson in third and Jody Fannin in fourth place but the latter was forced out of his position at the complex on the opening lap when Tom Howard – up from seventh on the grid – pushed his TJ Motorsport team-mate wide.
Ingram continued to lead into lap two but it wasn’t long before Hill thought about another passing attempt and into Clervaux he moved to the front once more with the ever-consistent Richardson holding third ahead of Alex Austin who got ahead of Howard.
The fight for fifth then heated-up and came to a head on lap three along the start/finish straight when Howard and the Moore siblings, Sarah and David, ran three abreast into the first corner. For David Moore, it all ended in tears as he was pitched into a costly spin – he eventually recovered into an eighth place finish.
Howard continued to be pressurised by Sarah Moore but the 2009 Ginetta Junior Champion fell away over the next few laps. Caught in a battle over seventh place involving Jake Giddings – hugely impressive having started 17th on the grid – and Chris Swanwick, Moore slipped further away after mid-distance and eventually finished in 12th place.
Hill edged further and further clear of Ingram over the course of the last three laps or so and built a cushion of two seconds by the finish – sealing his sixth victory from 10 races and third success on the trot. Ingram, meanwhile, added yet another well deserved second place to his season’s tally – his fifth podium visit.
Richardson ran a lonely, yet highly competitive, third for the majority of the race, her sixth rostrum of the year, and in doing so remained in touch with the two championship leaders, just 11 points shy of Ingram and 20 points behind Hill.
Austin held on to an equally lonely fourth place with Howard finishing in fifth ahead of Fannin – post race though, the Clerk of the Course served Howard with a one second penalty for gaining an unfair advantage on track so he slipped to sixth in the final classification behind Fannin.
Giddings emerged victorious at the head of a five-car train, a battle which resulted in the FML driver just pipping David Moore by 0.044 seconds. Having lined up on the ninth row of the grid, Giddings had a mountain to climb but produced a star performance and thoroughly deserved his top seven finish. Team Parker Racing pairing Swanwick and Adam Bonham took ninth and 10th respectively.
Reflecting on his tussle with Ingram, championship leader Hill added: “The fight with Tom was really good. He raced hard but fair and applied a lot of pressure during the first half of the race. We changed positions a few times but then he just made a slight mistake later on and that was it. I’ve got the momentum now ahead of the break before Snetterton so hopefully we can be strong there.”
Snetterton Circuit in Norfolk is next on the 2010 Ginetta Junior Championship calendar a full seven weeks from now with rounds 11 and 12 of the season taking place over the weekend 7th/8th August.
Provisional 2010 Ginetta Junior Championship Positions (after Rd10):1st Jake Hill, 253pts; 2nd Tom Ingram, 244pts; 3rd Louise Richardson, 233pts; 4th Jody Fannin, 199pts; 5th David Moore, 195pts; 6th Tom Howard, 193pts
