Joy for Lebbon and Rattican as Voisin has weekend to forget
It’s not very often that a Ginetta Junior race is won by 6.8 seconds. And it’s not very often that a driver bounces back from losing a win, a roll into the gravel trap and a disappointing 13th place to catapult themselves back into title contention in the next event.
But that change in fortunes is what Tom Lebbon has enjoyed in recent weeks. After his miserable Silverstone event, he was 74 points adrift of leader Bailey Voisin and admitted he “lost all hope for a little bit”. That despondency was replaced by confidence at Croft as he came very close to winning both races.
The opener featured two safety car periods and all came down to a one-lap shootout. Lebbon had briefly lost the lead to Tom Edgar around the outside of Tower on the first lap, but Lebbon got back ahead with a dive up the inside of the hairpin. Also on the move was fellow title contender Josh Rattican, who passed Edgar at Tower on the first of the safety car restarts. And Tower again proved to be a happy hunting ground for Rattican on that final lap as he made another great move to take the win.
Things were far less close in race two as Lebbon was left comfortably ahead of first-time podium finisher Freddie Tomlinson and Rattican at the flag as the pack squabbled behind.
“It was a bit of a strange race to lead from lights to flag!” said Lebbon, who admitted he found driving without the usual Ginetta Junior pressure a tricky balancing act.
While Lebbon and new points leader Rattican had strong weekends, it could all have been very different. Voisin had qualified on pole for both races by over half a second but his R Racing car was found to have a modified restrictor plate and he was sent to the back.
He fought up to 10th in the opener but got tangled up in an incident in race two, leaving him 22 points behind Rattican.
“It was just one of those weekends,” said Voisin, devastated to have lost his poles. “The first race was a tough race – there were two safety cars so there wasn’t much racing. I moved up 10 places, which was pretty decent.
“Today [race two] was one of those things. We’ve now got to throw this one [weekend] away and move on.” Just as Lebbon was able to do after his own woes at Silverstone.