Ginetta Junior driver Oli Basey-Fisher encountered a tough event at Knockhill Circuit in Scotland over the weekend, 25th/26th August, but still managed to deliver an impressive seventh place finishthird in the Rookie Cupduring his first ever race at the challenging Fife track.
Beginning the rain-affected round 13 on Saturday afternoon from 11th on the grid, following a tricky run in the preceding wet qualifying session, the 17-year-old from Great Finborough made excellent progress throughout the 12 lap encounter to secure an important haul of championship points.
Maintaining 11th position off the start, the Tollbar Racing with WIRED driver moved into the top 10 on lap two at the expense of William Palmer and then gained another position the next time around when Scottish racer Elliot Paterson dropped back.
Running in a relatively lonely ninth place into the closing stages of the race, on lap 10 Oli profited from an incident involving Ollie Chadwick and Keith Donegan to leap into seventh position where he remained to the chequered flagkeeping a recovering Paterson at bay by 0.4 seconds.
Round 14 on Sunday afternoon, which was televised live across the UK on ITV4 and ITV4 HD, wasnt as fruitful for Oli but the Silverstone Ginetta Junior Scholarship Winner did race impressively until an excursion on lap 10 led to retirement following contact with the barriers.
Oli made a good getaway on the inclined starting grid to quickly move up from 13th position and he subsequently threaded his way neatly through a multi-car incidenttriggered following a spin by erstwhile championship leader Sennan Fieldingto climb into ninth place.
Driving well, Oli then made further gains on lap three when Harry Woodhead, William Palmer and Pepe Massot got too close for comfortopening the way for the Century Logistics-backed Tollbar driver to climb into seventh place and second in the Rookie classification.
Dicing hard with Keith Donegan for the position over the next few laps, as Oli approached Scotsman corner on lap 10 his rear-wheels locked under braking and he slid off into the gravel and retirement, an excursion thought to have been assisted by some water deposited on the track by another car.
Its definitely been a character building weekend, commented Oli, Its a hard track to learneven though Knockhill is short its very technical and requires a lot of commitment. The changing weather hasnt helped either, as well as learning the circuit Ive had to learn the conditions too at the same time so its been very challenging.
Race two was going well until the off. Its thought Harry Woodheads car may have dropped some water as it was overheating. I did miss my heel and toe at that point though and locked the rear wheels so it looks like it could have been part my error and maybe partly because of some fluid on the track. Im definitely aiming for better at Rockingham next month!
There is now a four week break in the Ginetta Junior Championship calendar with rounds 15 and 16 of the season scheduled to take place at Rockingham in Northamptonshire on 22nd/23rd September.
