Jamie Caroline v Senna Proctor. HHC Motorsport v JHR Developments. Pirtek Racing v Team BMR.
The 2015 Ginetta Junior Championship comes to an end this weekend at Brands Hatch GP with a two-horse race for the title set to go down to the wire for the first time since 2012.
Caroline heads to Kent as the favourite to take the title courtesy of a seventeen point lead, which he maintained with an ninth win of the campaign last time out at Siverstone as he continued his sparkling second Junior campaign with HHC.
Fellow sophomore driver Proctor is right in the hunt though following a pair of second place finishes at Silverstone, the eleventh and twelfth podiums in a season that has featured three wins for the JHR man.
Both drivers were in the wars at Silverstone, with a chaotic second race seeing Caroline and Proctor pick up nine and six point championship penalties respectively, while a five place grid penalty for Caroline for race one at Brands could swing the pendulum in Proctor’s favour.
Just as hotly contested as the battle for the title will be the two-way fight for third in the standings, with just four points separating Lewis Brown and Dan Zelos – who are both also chasing their first wins of the season.
R&J Motorsport’s Brown is in the hotseat following a run of eleven top six finishes in the last twelve races, with four podium finishes to his name so far, though Zelos was a two-time winner last season and has made six trips to the podium this campaign.
Another big battle to be decided at Brands Hatch is the Rookie Cup. Stuart Middleton made a big move for the honours at Rockingham early last month with a pair of outright second places, but Patrik Matthiesen hit back with a maiden Junior win at Silverstone to give himself a 28 point lead heading into the season finale.
Matthiesen will be pulling double duty over the weekend, as he and his HHC Motorsport team-mates will be taking on JHR Developments’ sextet in the hope of securing their outfit the Teams Championship – with the two squads tied on 902 points heading into the weekend.
As well as the scraps for silverware, the Brands GP finale will also see the rest of the field pushing hard to finish their seasons with a flourish. Amongst those keen to end on a high will be Billy Monger and Jonathan Hadfield.
Monger will be hoping to put a rough spell behind him and return to the form that saw him take a win and a second place at the Brands Indy season opener, while Hadfield took the same results next time out at Donington Park and hasn’t featured on the podium since.
A sensational second outright podium finish of the season at Silverstone looks to have cemented third in the Rookie standings for Kyle Hornby, with more top three finishes the target, a milestone Matt Chapman has in his sights too having finished in the top six in four of the last six races.
Chapman’s Total Control Racing team-mate Dave Wooder secured a maiden top six finish at Silverstone, and having qualified in the top three twice this season including pole position at Oulton Park, he too will think a podium finish is within reach.
The destination of pole position will also provide another fascinating sub-plot for the weekend, with the nine meetings so far producing nine different pole-setters. Proctor, Brown, Zelos and Chapman lead the potential candidates to make it a remarkable ten out of ten.
Will Tregurtha, Alex Day, Geri Nicosia and Ben Green will all be looking to end impressive Rookie campaigns with strong top ten results, as will latecomers Charlie Fagg and Devlin DeFrancesco who have hit the ground running since joining the series at Croft.
Fellow Croft newbie Connor Grady became the 22nd different driver to take a top ten race result this season at Silverstone, with just JHR Developments duo Esmee Hawkey, Rowan Bailey and Frank Bird left to try and secure that breakthrough result – Hawkey having shown potential at Silverstone by qualifying ninth.
With all three titles still in the balance and a packed 24 car grid of determined teenagers looking to end their seasons on a high, the two races around the fast, flowing Brands Hatch GP circuit are sure to provide some fantastic racing to cap off a memorable 2015 campaign.
Following two free practice sessions on Friday, the teams and drivers will return to the track for one final practice on Saturday morning at 09:30, followed by qualifying at 14:35. The opening race comes that afternoon at 17:30, before the final race of the year will be televised live on ITV4 at 12:12 on Sunday.
Full championship standings ahead of the weekend can be found here.
