The 2008 Ginetta Junior championship is heading for a thrilling climax after an exciting couple of races on the Silverstone national circuit last weekend.

Dino Zamparelli took pole in the Qualifying session but it wasn’t a dominant performance. The top 16 were only separated by less than a second, with the entire field separated by just over 1.5 seconds. Aaron Williamson took a surprising 2nd, his best ever position, with Zamparelli’s championship rival, Thomas Carnaby in third. The championships two Girl racers, Alice Powell and Sarah Moore took 8th and 12th respectively.

At the start of the first race held on Saturday afternoon, Zamparelli got an excellent start and led with second placed qualifier Aaron Williamson maintaining his position as they raced through Copse.

Diaster struck for one of the front runners Into Maggotts, when Thomas Carnaby was involved in a clash with Fergus Walkinshaw. This resulted in retirement for Carnaby, the last thing his championship challenge needed.

This left Williamson in 2nd, George Richardson in 3rd and Dominic Pettit in 4th. Then going into Brooklands, Josh Hill went off as he lost control under braking. He came to rest right in front of the BRDC club house, very embarrassing considering his father is their president!

Daniel Lloyd, who was racing this weekend with a fractured metacarpal bone in his right hand, started to move up the field. He moved into the top five after the lap 1 incident at Becketts and then shot past two cars into Brooklands taking Richardson and Petit to move into an excellent 2nd place!

Sadly it was soon to all go wrong for the Huddersfield based driver, heading through Luffield, Lloyd was then run into by Pettit, leaving the unfortunate Lloyd stuck in the gravel. This now left Pettit back in 2nd ahead of Richardson and Walkinshaw. Another driver making progress through all the chaos was Alice Powell as she charged up to 5th place after an uncharacteristic slow start that had left her in 10th.

Richardson, Walkinshaw and Powell then started a battle for 3rd with Walkinshaw and Richardson running side by side. There was then another collision this time between Richardson and Walkinshaw. Richardson spun into the pitwall, but continued near the back of the field.

This moved Powell up into 3rd behind Petit with Walkinshaw in 4th, Jake Farndon in 5th and Williamson in 6th.

These positions remained until the final lap when Williamson got the better of Farndon to gain 5th. Walkinshaw was by then flying in his attempts to repass Powell, setting a new Ginetta Junior lap record in the process with a time of 1m 14.368 (79.34mph) which also gained him an additional point. She was not to be an easy target however and kept him behind.

With all the Chaos behind him Zamparelli took the chequered flag with a seven second lead. Petit took Second with Powell in a jubilant third. Sarah Moore was another driver who had taken advantage of the battling ahead taking 8th after starting 12th.

However after all the podium celebrations there was controversy with several drivers failing ride height checks. As a result of this, Pettit, Farndon and Llewellyn's cars were excluded. This promoted Powell up to 2nd place and Walkinshaw up into 3rd. This also put Sarah Moore into a Ginetta season best 6th position.

1st 8 Dino Zamparelli Muzz Racing 13:53.198
2nd 15 Alice Powell Muzz Racing + 7.665
3rd 91 Fergus Walkinshaw TollBar Racing + 8.003
4th 25 Aaron Williamson TJ Motorsport + 10.399
5th 51 Alex Austin Tockwith Motorsport + 12.017
6th 26 Sarah Moore Tockwith Motorsport + 12.526
7th 60 Jake Batty TJ Motorsport + 21.414
8th 29 Ashley Craig Driver + 21.887
9th 70 Max McGuire Tockwith Motorsport + 22.067
10th 33 Jake Rattenbury Muzz Racing + 23.448

Both Powell and Moore were encouraged by their excellent results on Saturday and were hoping to repeat them on Sunday. Powell was slightly worried by her cars handling in the first race, with the car having quite a bit of oversteer. She hoped this could be fixed for race 3 especially as rain was forecast.

But as the second race got underway on Sunday, the forecasts proved to be correct with rain meaning the track had a lot of standing water on it.

Sadly during the parade laps Powell found that not only had the oversteer problem not been fixed, but it was considerably worse as the car spun before the race even started.
As the race got underway things continued in a similar vein with more than half the field spinning at various points, several more than once. Amazingly with all these offs, only one driver failed to finish, poor Oliver Llewellyn who with his disqualification from race 1 was having a weekend to forget.

Alice was still really struggling with her car spinning several times in the complex. She commented afterwards just how bad it was; “My car was just un-driveable, I couldn’t even take Woodcote flat and usually that would be no problem. Everyone was just leaving me behind.” She commented after the race, clearly feeling very down. She eventually finished 16th doing well to stop such an ill handling car from being last.

Sarah Moore had similar problems with her car finishing the race at the tail of the field in 18th place. Up at the front Zamparelli took another win by over a second from Hill, who made up for Saturdays disappointment. Walkinshaw took another 3rd place with Zamparelli’s championship rival, Carnaby staying in touch in 4th.

1st 8 Dino Zamparelli Muzz Racing 15:07.238
2nd 55 Josh Hill TollBar Racing + 1.021
3rd 91 Fergus Walkinshaw TollBar Racing + 1.769
4th 6 Thomas Carnaby TollBar Racing + 2.041
5th 28 George Richardson TollBar Racing + 3.886
6th 66 Dominic Pettit Dominant Motorsport + 4.078
7th 25 Aaron Williamson TJ Motorsport + 5.549
8th 29 Ashley Craig Driver + 6.007
9th 60 Jake Batty TJ Motorsport + 6.179
10th 23 Daniel Lloyd Tockwith Motorsport + 6.649
15th 15 Alice Powell Muzz Racing + 10.195
18th 26 Sarah Moore Tockwith Motorsport + 14.429

The Championship now looks certain to go down to the wire, Zamparelli has returned to form and has retaken the lead, but Carnaby is still getting good results so it’s too close to call at the front. The Battle for third place is getting similarly close with Hill and Lloyd fighting it out. Powell and Moore both shone in race 1, Moore getting her best result of the season and Powell equalling hers. Sunday hadn’t been successful for either of them but they are definitely progressing and looking stronger with every meeting, Powell in particular looking like she will make a strong finish to the season. She will be hoping to climb further up the points table from her current 10th position.

The series recommences this weekend at Mallory Park in Leicestershire on the 6th and 7th of September. The Juniors will be joining the other Ginetta series as part of the second Ginetta festival this season. These meetings, (the other being at Cadwell Park earlier in the year.) are a celebration of 50 years of the Ginetta Marque and next weekend’s looks set to be very exciting indeed. The juniors are sure to be one of the highlights of the meeting and you’ll be able to read about the races and how well the series two Girl racers go on Girlracer next week.