Hometown Hero Morris Increases Points Lead With Sixth Win
Wrexham 15-year-old Seb Morris enjoyed a victorious homecoming at his local track, Oulton Park Island Circuit, Saturday, 4th June, to extend his already impressive Ginetta Junior Championship lead to an incredible 86 points with his sixth win from seven outings.
Thoroughly dominating qualifying to take pole position for round seven of the season by a massive 0.7 seconds, the Hillspeed driver was never headed throughout the 10-lap encounter. After the first couple of laps, Morris motored away from his rivals and he went on to build an unassailable winning margin of almost nine seconds.
Charlie Robertson, the youngest driver on the entire Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship support package, matched his previous best with a fantastic drive from fourth on the grid to second place – the HHC Motorsport 14-year-old’s second career podium.
Thruxton race winner George Gamble, meanwhile, finished in third place for TJ Motorsport to make it three podiums from the last three races to underline his continued progress. Team-mate Sennan Fielding, the Ginetta Junior Scholarship Winner, took his best finish yet with a fine fourth place.
Speaking on his sixth win of the year, Morris commented: “It was a really good race, I had a bit of a bad start – I just misjudged it – but I managed to stay ahead and from there I drove like I was on a qualifier every lap. It’s fantastic to win again, especially at my local track.”
Although Morris was untouchable in qualifying, the fight for the remaining spot on the front-row was fierce with experienced Ginetta Junior campaigner Tom Howard just outpacing Gamble and Robertson by 0.023 seconds and 0.066 seconds respectively.
Jake Giddings steered himself onto the third row, just a couple of 10ths of a second shy of the closely matched trio ahead, with Fielding sixth, Max Coates seventh, Brad Bailey eighth, William Foster ninth and Patrick McClughan rounding out the first five rows.
Prior to the actual race start, Howard pitted his Tollbar Racing G40 with a possible mechanical issue but he was given the green-light by his team to start from the pitlane. When round seven got underway, Morris managed to hold-off Gamble – despite a sluggish getaway – with Robertson in third ahead of Giddings and Fielding.
Morris and Gamble ran nose-to-tail at the front into lap two but the leader soon started to press home an advantage and by the beginning of lap three he was almost a second to the good. While Morris pulled further clear, Gamble came under increasing pressure from Robertson and Giddings with the top four having broken away from Fielding in fifth at the head of the next train of cars.
As the race approached mid-distance, Robertson got quicker and quicker and on lap four at the hairpin he managed to get ahead of Gamble for second place. Gamble tried to stay with the new second place runner but he had to instead turn his attentions to fending off Giddings’ challenge.
Into Knickerbrook on lap six, Giddings made his move to take third place but Gamble hit back immediately on the exit and regained the position on the run up Clayhill. Giddings’ bid to get back on terms was then affected by a dislodged bonnet which impaired his vision.
Causing a particular problem on lap eight, the FML driver lost fourth to Fielding but he did manage to see off Coates and Bailey – although a coming together between those two on the final lap at The Avenue resulted in Coates collecting the barriers and Bailey dropping to seventh behind Foster.
At the chequered flag on lap 10, Morris took an untroubled 8.8 second victory from Robertson who was three seconds clear of Gamble. Fielding took fourth, some six seconds adrift, with Giddings managing to take fifth ahead of Foster and Bailey.
Eighth went to 2010 Ginetta Junior Ireland Champion Niall Murray, the Beacon Racing driver coming through strongly from 14th on the grid, with Howard scything his way through the order into ninth after his pitlane start to maintain a top six placing in the points. Eric Morris rounded out the top 10.
“Seb (Morris) managed to get away from George (Gamble) and me at the start and after that we couldn’t do anything about him”, said second-placed Robertson, “We just need to up the pace a little bit tomorrow if we can, we’ll see what happens.”
Gamble added: “If I can get a good, clean start tomorrow and keep a good gap to Seb I think we can fight him for the win.”
Round eight of the 2011 Ginetta Junior Championship will get underway at 16.30 tomorrow, Sunday, 5th June, and will be screened live across the UK on Freeview, cable and digital satellite channel ITV4 and on the ITV4 HD channel. Additional live streaming will be carried at itv.com/touringcars
Provisional 2011 Ginetta Junior Championship Positions (after Rd7):1st Seb Morris, 248pts; 2nd George Gamble, 161pts; 3rd William Foster, 135pts; 4th Max Coates, 124pts; 5th Charlie Robertson, 121pts; 6th Tom Howard, 119pts
