Rowan Vincent fought his way to a fifteenth place finish during a difficult outing in the Michelin Ginetta Junior Championship at Croft this past weekend (10/11 October). Vincent headed into the meeting in a confident mood following his highest points-scoring weekend of the season so far at Silverstone two weeks’ prior, though his visit to Croft didn’t start too well as issues hampered him in both of Friday’s free practice sessions. With those limiting him to just seven laps, compared to nearly 20 for most of his rivals, the Woking based racer was on the backfoot headed into qualifying the next day. He put in a strong showing though to record the 17th quickest time in his Richardson Racing Ginetta G40. The 15 year old produced a good start in race one on Saturday afternoon, battling well in the busy midfield to run in 16th early on. Unfortunately in tricky wet conditions though, a small error through the high-speed Jim Clark Esses resulted in a spin and an early end to his race. Vincent was determined to bounce back strongly in his Concreate, V4 Woodflooring Ltd and CPP backed machine in race two, which was televised live on ITV4 on Sunday. Maintaining position at the end of lap one, he then got into the thick of the action. In a typically frenetic Ginetta Junior race, the karting graduate established himself well and managed to avoid some incidents around him to get the car to the finish in 15th – that was a seventh top 15 finish of his maiden Ginetta campaign to date. Rowan Vincent: “It was just one of those meetings unfortunately, where our lack of track time on Friday massively hampered our chances for the weekend. I gave it everything I had to play catch up and I’m pleased I could end up with a solid points finish. “This season is all a huge learning curve for me and while I’m always pushing for the best results possible, weekend’s like this provide me with a lot of new knowledge and experience that I learn from and aim to build upon for the final two rounds of the season.” Only two weekends remain in the 2020 Ginetta Junior Championship calendar. The penultimate rounds take place at Snetterton in Norfolk in two weeks’ time (24/25 October), before the season finale at Brands Hatch in Kent next month (14/15 November).
Image from Jakob Ebrey Photography.