A triple rostrum for Henry Cameron in Ginetta Juniors and a double Mckenzie Douglass in the GT championship for the V8-powered G56 GTP8s marked a solid return for the team from Maldon, Essex, from their trip to the daunting Cheshire circuit.
Ginetta Junior Championship
With qualifying cancelled due to several on-track incidents, grid positions were set by championship order. This put Henry Cameron right behind a first-lap incident that forced him to take evasive action and dropped him to the tail of the field.
The Wilmslow racer, competing at his home circuit, redoubled his efforts to make up ground and was rewarded with second place in the Freshman Trophy class.
An incredible four-wide finish to Race Two left Henry within one thousandth of a second of the class win as the podium finishers were separated by just 0.008s. He was again second in Race Three to notch his seventh podium of his rookie campaign.
Team-mate Freddie Lloyd spent all three races as part of a pack of eight drivers who battled for the final podium spot and made some entertaining passing moves in all three races.
This netted him sixth and fifth places in the Rookie class with a best overall result of sixth on Sunday morning. He looked set to finish higher in Race Three as a multi-car incident unfolded in front of him at the final corner of the race.
Unfortunately, as the Sevenoaks driver drove onto the grass to avoid the incident, another car spun into him and sent his Ginetta G40 into the wall. He emerged unhurt and left Oulton Park seventh in the points table.
Ginetta GT Championship
Reigning champion Mckenzie Douglass scored a double-podium finish at Oulton Park that included his best Pro-class result of the year in Monday’s 40-minute ‘Pitstop Race’ as the Welsh teenager showcased his car control in mixed conditions.
Mckenzie, from Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, was restricted to just a handful of laps in Friday testing, but rebounded well to qualify a season’s-best fourth and converted that into third place in the Pro class in a wet Sprint Race.
He avoided a hectic first corner concertina in the double-length ‘endurance’ race on Monday to launch up to second place early on, but fell outside the top 10 when a miscommunication caused him to make his mandatory pitstop later than his rivals.
Crucially, the safety car was deployed just as Mckenzie was passing the pit entrance, leaving the Fox team no opportunity to signal him to pit until after he’d committed to spend a lap at slow speed.
While rivals who pitted before the safety car appeared were able to continue at race speeds as Mckenzie made his mandatory stop, he was pushed back to 11th overall, but showed his prowess to make several excellent moves to finish second in Pro.
Team-mate James Rolling returned to the Fox line-up after a testing crash last month led to him skipping the Silverstone event on doctors’ advice.
The Ascot-based Welshman belied his lack of experience of both Oulton Park and of wet conditions to qualify a career-best seventh in the Am class and then achieve his highest finishing position of fourth in the category in an ultra-challenging feature race.
His Saturday race had ended early when a spin caused floor damage and led to his retirement.
Paul McNeilly, Team Principal, said: “There have been some real positives this weekend with five podium finishes across our Ginetta racing programmes. I’m gutted for Henry to miss out on the Race Two Freshman win as we thought we had that one, and for Freddie to be put in the wall in the final race when he was trying to avoid the incident. Mckenzie’s overcome a few technical issues that the team did an excellent job to fix and scored two podiums and James has driven so well to just miss the class podium despite his lack of experience.”
