Sebastian Priaulx secured his second win of the 2017 Ginetta Junior Championship campaign with a hard-fought success in the second race of the weekend at Thruxton.
Whilst the opening race of the weekend produced a thrilling battle for victory between up to seven cars, the second encounter produced a fascinating duel between Priaulx and Tom Gamble.
After trading the lead early on, the two JHR Developments drivers then seemed to work together to break away from the battling pack behind, before renewing battle in the closing laps.
Gamble had assumed the advantage through Goodwood on the third lap and maintained it for a large portion of the race, but a fantastic run out of the chicane late on gave Priaulx his chance.
Diving down the inside of Gamble as they headed into Allard for the penultimate time, Priaulx got the position and then maintained it to the flag for the victory.
Second was still enough for Gamble to further extend his championship lead though, whilst behind it was Daniel Harper who completed the podium after a sensational drive.
Having started sixteenth after seeing lap times removed in qualifying for track limits, Harper stormed through into the top ten on the opening lap, before picking his way through the order to third.
The battle for the final podium position had featured Harry King, Harry Dyson and Adam Smalley in the first half of the race, with Dyson holding the position at the end of lap three.
His challenge would stop on the next tour however as after running wide at Village, he then suffered contact with Luke Browning at the final chicane that brought his race to a premature end.
Smalley would hold third position for a couple of laps therefore before he was overtaken by his predecessor to the Scholarship crown Harper, with time lost dropping him to sixth.
Emerging from some late battling to secure fourth at the finish was Kiern Jewiss, with former team-mates King and Tom Wood rounding out the top six behind.
Jordan Collard bounced back from his race one DNF to take seventh, a result that means all twenty of the competitors this season have now taken an outright top ten finish.
Tom Canning and Matt Luff completed the Rookie podium with Jewiss after finishing eighth and ninth overall, with Connor Grady rounding out the top ten ahead of Browning.
Full race results can be found here: http://tsl-timing.com/file/?f=TOCA/2017/171803gij.pdf
