Jake Giddings and Seb Morris earned a pole position apiece during qualifying at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, for today’s opening two rounds of the 2011 Ginetta Junior Championship.
For 16-year-old Giddings, his fastest time of 56.146 seconds (76.85mph) marks the first time the FML driver has qualified on pole position – and it very nearly wasn’t possible with a variety of mechanical problems blighting his build-up.
Nonetheless, the Wisbech racer came to the fore during the first qualifying session of 2011 to seal the coveted pole position by 0.163 seconds, a relatively large gap by Ginetta Junior standards and particularly at a track as tight and twisty as the 1.2-mile Indy Circuit.
“It’s really good to start the year this way, it gives us all a big boost after the problems we had during practice”, said Giddings, “Actually, I was lucky to get the pole lap in the end as the car felt like it was developing another problem at the end of the session! Hopefully everything will be ok tomorrow.”
For Hillspeed’s Morris, the 2010 Ginetta Junior Winter Series Champion, his campaign also got off to a fantastic start with a front-row start for round one alongside Giddings and then a pole position start for round two – thanks to his second fastest time of today’s qualifying session, 56.369 seconds.
Mere 100ths of a second split the top drivers during the first half of the 15-minute session with Morris leading the way at mid-distance. Giddings came into the picture with around five minutes remaining and although Morris hit back to take pole position for both encounters, Giddings posted an unbeatable lap with just a couple of minutes to go.
William Foster was third fastest for Tollbar Racing, two 10ths of a second adrift of Morris, with Brad Bailey the quickest of the TJ Motorsport runners in fourth a mere 0.003 seconds shy. For the round two grid, the two switch with Bailey third and Foster fourth.
George Gamble, who made his Ginetta Junior debut during last November’s Winter Series, qualified fifth for round one but will line up sixth for the second race alongside Tom Howard – the 2010 race winner one of the expected title contenders for the new season. Howard was only able to steer his Tollbar car to seventh fastest on the overall times but his consistency gave him fifth for race two.
Newcomer Charlie Robertson impressed for HHC with the sixth quickest lap and seventh best second fastest lap. Privateer runner Max Coates will begin both of tomorrow’s races from eighth on the grid with the top 10 completed by fellow karting graduate Struan Moore – driving for Hillspeed – and the reigning Ginetta Junior Ireland Champion Niall Murray, the latter another with problems in practice.
Sennan Fielding, winner of the Ginetta Junior Scholarship, was only able to complete half the laps of his rivals due to an unfortunate excursion at Paddock Hill Bend which left his TJ Motorsport car stuck in the gravel trap. Nonetheless, he retained 11th fastest time for both grids.
Round one of the 2011 Ginetta Junior Championship season is scheduled to get underway at 11.05, Sunday, 3rd April, with round two following at 17.45. Both encounters will be screened live on Freeview, cable and digital satellite channel ITV4, in High Definition on ITV4 HD and online at itv.com/touringcars
