Matt Chapman secured a breakthrough weekend in the Ginetta Junior Championship at Knockhill, finally turning front-running pace into a pair of maiden top six finishes.
Just like in the last couple of meetings, Chapman set an impressive pace in practice in Scotland, but this time around he was able to convert it into strong results in qualifying and the races.
The Total Control Racing driver took his Ginetta G40J to fourth on the timesheets in qualifying, his best effort of 1m 02.377s being just 0.2 seconds shy of pole.
Chapman instantly slotted into the podium battle in race one, running fourth early on before snatching third on lap three.
A half spin at Scotsman on lap five dropped him back to seventh, but he moved up to sixth a lap later and nearly snatched fifth in the final few laps.
Race two saw Chapman climb up to fifth off the start, a position he would remain in for the duration of the race.
It was far from a dull race though, with Chapman in a closely fought three car scrap for the final podium place, finishing less than a second shy of the top three for his best result of the season so far.
“It’s been quite a strong weekend overall, we were P3 in testing on Friday, only a tenth off, and we knew we needed to make it count which I was able to do with our best qualifying of the year,” said Chapman, who remains twelfth in the drivers standings.
“We also needed to make it count in the races which we managed to do. Race one was good and we were close to getting that first podium, we bounced back well in race two with fifth though – our best result of the year.
“We’ve shown our pace again, as we have at the last few tracks, so now we need to move on from here and keep building the momentum when we get to Rockingham in a couple of weeks.”
