Jamie Chadwick feels her final position in the 2014 Ginetta Junior Championship isn’t a reflection of the pace she showed during the course of her second season in the BTCC support series.
Chadwick finished the year eighth in the championship standings after a number of results she described to The Checkered Flag as “shocking”, but told us that she ends her time in the Juniors happy after establishing herself as a regular podium finisher during the year.
The former Ginetta Scholarship winner took third place finishes at Brands Hatch and Thruxton at the start of the campaign, and then one apiece at Knockhill, Rockingham and Silverstone in the second half of the year to end the season on a high.
Chadwick feels there was potential for more though, and was left to rue a number of frustrating results that left her missing out on a higher championship finish.
“We’ve had five podiums this year which I’m pretty happy with, but unfortunately that’s been counteracted with four DNF’s and some shocking results which hampered any chance of being in the top five of the championship,” said Chadwick.
“There are a lot of results I’m disappointed with, I look at races and think ‘I could have done much better in that one’, but then realistically this year has been seriously competitive, so to get any podium finishes is really tough.
“I don’t think the results on paper necessarily reflect how much I’ve progressed as a driver, working with my team and my driver coach Jonny Adam. I’ve been consistently in the top six on pace, so I don’t think we’ve done too bad at all.”
Chadwick: “This Year Has Been Seriously Competitive” – Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Many of those disappointing results for the 16 year old came as she found herself in the thick of the action in the competitive Junior field, ending up as the innocent victim of contact on a couple of occasions.
“In the Ginetta Juniors it always seems to be the top three or four that get away in the races cleanly, and then there’s the pack behind that’s normally carnage,” reflected the Gloucestershire-based racer.
“Unfortunately some poor qualifying positions have put me into that mix where unavoidable incidents can hamper your progress.
“I’ve been learning from it though, and you can pick out why things happened and work out what you can do next time to avoid it, and that’s helps me for the future.”
While also ending the year frustrated not to have taken a first car-racing victory, “it’s a shame we didn’t get a win this year, I really wanted to get one as it’s a huge confidence booster,” Chadwick is now ready to take the next step in her career and is assessing her options for 2015.
“I’m having a test in an Aston Martin GT4, and I’m also looking to test a GT5 Challenge car and some other cars,” she concluded. “The aim is to get testing, see what I’m quick in, what I get along with and then go from there.”
Read about the GT4 Aston Martin test with Beechdean AMR by clicking here.
