The 2016 Simpson Race Products Ginetta Junior Championship season came to its conclusion at Brands Hatch GP last weekend, and we’ve crunched the numbers to find all the key statistics and landmarks from the meeting.
With newly-crowned champion Will Tregurtha electing to skip the meeting, the focus was on the pack behind, from which Stuart Middleton emerged as the clear vice-champion.
A return to form for Middleton saw him take the opening victory of the weekend – a success that means he ends the campaign with more wins, seven, than anybody else.
On top of that, the four laps led over the weekend means the Douglas Motorsport ace ends the year with more laps led, 58, and miles led, 110.49, than any of his rivals.
The other race victory went the way of Lewis Brown meanwhile, his second win of the campaign coming almost six months on from his first back at Donington Park in April.
The win was the perfect conclusion to Brown’s three year tenure in the series, with the 17 year old finishing up with 65 race starts, 12 podium finishes and back-to-back top three points finishes.
Brown took third in the championship from Dave Wooder, who had taken a first pole position of the season in qualifying – making him the sixth different driver to top a session this year.
Four drivers emerged from the final qualifying of the year with their best results of the season: Jordan Collard (9th), Greg Johnson (16th), Jenson Dineen (17th) and Anthony Ayres (18th).
Ayres and Johnson were able to then back that up with their strong race results of the year as well, taking twelfth and thirteenth respectively in the live-televised final race.
Also breaking new ground in that race was Geri Nicosia who posted his first fastest lap in the championship – becoming the ninth different driver to do so this season.
With Wooder, Charlie Digby and Harry Dyson prematurely ruled out of the weekend’s racing on Saturday, only fifteen drivers would go on to tackle Sunday’s two races.
That was the lowest grid numbers of the season, with the previous low having been during the annual visit north of the border to Knockhill, which only drew seventeen entrants.
The absence of Tregurtha and Wooder from the starting grids also means that of the 28 drivers to compete this season, only ten ended up starting every race.
Out of those, three remarkably went on to reach the chequered flag in all 25 encounters: Seb Priaulx, Nicosia and Brown – the latter making it 61 finishes in 65 starts in the series.
Keep an eye on The Checkered Flag in the coming weeks for a full statistical breakdown of the 2016 Ginetta Junior Championship with our annual ‘Season in Numbers’ feature.
