Jamie Caroline stamped his authority on the Ginetta Junior Championship once again with a commanding lights to flag win in race two at Rockingham.
Fresh from victory in the opening race of the weekend, Caroline proved unstoppable once again in the live-televised encounter as he stormed clear from pole position.
An early battle behind allowed him to streak a second clear after the opening lap, and he extended that advantage to a high of 4.2 seconds before cruising to the flag for an eighth victory of the campaign.
Caroline reflected: “You never expect to win by that sort of margin in this series, where everybody is so close, so I was a bit surprised to see how quickly I pulled away. Fortunately the safety car didn’t come out when a couple of cars were off track!
“It wasn’t quite a perfect meeting as I didn’t get the pole position or fastest laps, but it’s certainly been a fantastic weekend and I’m confident heading into Silverstone next.”
His chief title rival Senna Proctor ran second early on, but a slick move from Stuart Middleton at Chapman Curve put the reigning Scholarship winner in front on lap three.
A big train formed behind Middleton for second in the middle stages of the race, but a composed drive saw him complete a second place double for the weekend.
Behind, Proctor came under pressure late on from team-mate Dan Zelos – with a move into Deene Hairpin on the final lap resulting in contact as Proctor closed the door.
That spun them both around, with Proctor ending up in seventh and Zelos down in fifteenth, allowing Lewis Brown to take the final podium position to continue his fantastic run of ten consecutive top six finishes.
A battling drive from Patrik Matthiesen saw the Dane climb from eleventh on the grid to fourth at the finish after a close fought battle with Billy Monger and Matt Chapman, while Dave Wooder, Kyle Hornby and Charlie Fagg completed the top ten behind Proctor.
Ben Green in the top twelve early on, however it unravelled on lap five with a spin at Deene and then a moment out of the final chicane that ended with him hitting the outside wall.
That put him on the retirements list alongside Alex Day and Cameron Roberts, who came to grief at Yentwood and Deene Hairpin respectively in the first half of the race.
Full race results can be found here.
