Thomas Carnaby led home a Tollbar Racing podium lock-out during the opening Ginetta Junior Championship encounter at
Mallory Park's special 'Ginetta Festival' to close in once again on Dino Zamparelli's title lead.
Having been a true see-saw battle for supremacy for several race meetings now, the fight at the head of the driver standings is continuing to bubble away nicely with Carnaby carrying the momentum once again during round 21 with his sixth win of the campaign.
Dominating morning qualifying with an excellent performance from the off in tricky, wet conditions, the Scunthorpe racer took pole position with a time of 1min 00.939secs edging out Zamparelli by over three 10ths of a second.
Carnaby continued such form in the first of the weekend's races, avoiding any mistakes to take a comfortable two second win from team-mate Josh Hill with Fergus Walkinshaw rounding out the podium for Tollbar.
“I had a bit of a bad start last weekend at
Silverstone so that's what we focused on here really,” said the round 21 race winner, “I pulled away from Dino luckily and got away cleanly during the first lap. I looked in my rear-view mirror and Dino looked to be getting swamped by the other Tollbar drivers so it worked well for me – brilliant.
“In order to save fuel as it was a long race, I took most of the corners in fourth gear to help – the tanks on these cars aren't exactly big! Obviously you can do test sessions for 30 laps but you're never full pelt all the way. I'd done a couple of really quick laps and I thought it was better to take it a bit easier near the end and make it home safely.”
Following earlier rain, the track was wet for the first
Mallory Park encounter but it did dry as the race progressed. Some drivers benefited as they slanted towards drier settings while others counted the cost at the end after choosing to run with wet set-ups.
At the start of the race, Carnaby led away well from pole position with Zamparelli heading third place starter Hill as the trio made an initial break. At the John Cooper Esses, Hill moved into second past series leader Zamparelli but the biggest surprise was reserved for Jake Batty in fourth – a second row start marking a season's best effort.
Batty became involved in a tight battle for third with Zamparelli but Walkinshaw spoiled his party by slipping through on lap two at Shaw's Hairpin to take the place away.
