On his home circuit, Leicestershire racer Adam Bonham scored Team Parker Racing’s best result of the latest round of the Ginetta Junior Championship at Donington Park.
Bonham charged from well down the field to take sixth in the opening race, with fastest lap, and would have been in line for a top-four finish later on if the alternator belt had not snapped.
In a damp qualifying session, Bonham took sixth on the grid for race one and fourth for race two. He stormed from sixth to second into the first corner of the opening race, but got clipped by a rival into the gravel and had to recover. He battled into contention and set fastest lap on the final lap, with what was a lap record until the second race later in the day.
In the second race, Bonham was involved in a fraught four-car battle for the lead, but then his problem struck. With two laps remaining, coolant poured out and Bonham spun on his own oil.
Team-mate Finlay Ractliffe posted the most competitive showing of his very brief racing career when he set a remarkable third-fastest time in free practice on Saturday. He spun into the gravel at the beginning of qualifying, but in the first race the Monmouthshire 14-year-old rose into the top eight before spinning off at the Old Hairpin. With damage to his Ginetta G40, Ractliffe was called into the pits to retire his car and preserve it for race two.
In this one, he made the most of a late-race safety car to scythe his way up to seventh place by the finish – a superb result.
Driver coach Danny Buxton said: “The weekend promised so much but it didn’t quite deliver. What I’m really pleased about is that Adam responded well from a disappointing test day on Friday to show front-running pace all weekend.
“For the fourth meeting in a row he was running at the front. For him it was a weekend of what could have been – his raw pace promised so much.
“Finlay, after spinning off in qualifying, put in a blinding effort to get seventh. The cars were all bunched together for the last two laps and he was lunging left, right and centre. There isn’t a mark on his car either.”
The Ginetta Junior Championship again enjoyed live coverage of its second race at Donington Park on ITV4, and was streamed live on itv.com. The next round takes place at Brands Hatch in Kent on October 9/10.
