Tollbar Racing’s Oli Basey-Fisher secured his sixth top 10 finish of the Ginetta Junior Championship season at Croft Circuit in North Yorkshire on Sunday, 24th June, but rued what might have been after being punted out of sixth place in the first of the weekend’s two races.Signalling the end of the first half of his debut year in car racing, the Suffolk driver – who celebrated his 17th birthday last week – is ninth in the championship standings with 10 races still remaining and is just 21 points shy of the coveted top six.Croft didn’t prove to be the most straightforward of weekends and the Silverstone Ginetta Junior Scholarship Winner had several issues to contend with, not least a lack of straight-line speed which compromised his competitiveness in both races.“My car was handling fantastic through the corners but I was losing a lot of time on the straights and that affected us badly”, said the Great Finborough rookie, “It’s disappointing, the results weren’t quite what we wanted this weekend but at least we scored some points.”Starting both of the weekend’s races from eighth on the grid, at the beginning of round nine Oli made a fantastic getaway and threaded his way neatly through the first turn, Clervaux, to challenge for fifth position.

Holding sixth on the exit, ahead of Keith Donegan, Oli looked to have everything in control despite being under significant pressure. Then, on lap three into the complex, a botched attempt at a late pass by the Irishman resulted in the Tollbar Ginetta G40 being pushed off the circuit into a spin.Despite zero grip on the muddy grass Oli did manage to recover onto the circuit and although he lost roughly a minute in the process, the first year racer was able to finish in 11th place to collect some valuable points.“In qualifying it started raining fairly hard but the track was still pretty grippy, you didn’t think you had much grip but you had more than you thought so in the end I think I backed off a bit too much not wanting to risk anything.”, he explained.“I got a really good start in race one, up to about fifth to begin with, and then I was in sixth with [Keith] Donegan behind me. Although we didn’t have the straight-line speed, I was fairly happy I could hold onto the position at least but into the complex he tried a half-hearted move and spun me off onto the grass. It took a fair while to get back on the track – really disappointing.”In round 10, the Suffolk racer was shuffled back to ninth through the first sequence of corners and then down to 10th place on an opening lap which proved to be fairly robust. On lap six, Oli was able to move up into eighth place following a collision between two cars just ahead and that’s where he remained to the finish – fourth in the Rookie Class.There is now a lengthy seven week break from action with the Ginetta Junior season set to resume over the weekend 11th/12th August at Oli’s ‘home’ track, Snetterton 300 Circuit in Norfolk.

2012 Ginetta Junior Championship Driver Standings (after Rd10):1st Sennan Fielding, 262pts; 9th Oli Basey-Fisher, 127pts