The Ginetta UK Championships roll into North Yorkshire for Ginetta G-Fest on 27-28 June, with the Ginetta Junior Championship powered by Sunoco Race Fuels, Ginetta GT Academy, and Protyre Motorsport Ginetta GT Championship all converging for what promises to be a weekend of breakthrough performances and fiercely contested title battles. Few venues on the British calendar reward commitment quite like Croft, with its fast, flowing nature and sweeping high-speed curves demanding total confidence from drivers across all three championships. And after the drama that unfolded at Oulton Park, there is no shortage of unfinished business heading north.
Protyre Motorsport Ginetta GT Championship
Elite Motorsport enjoyed a near-perfect weekend at Oulton Park, with William Antrobus and Harry Gamble sharing a triple victory between them across the three races. Antrobus converted pole position into the race one lead off the rolling start, surviving an early safety car period before executing a flawless restart to take his first victory since joining the team, a result that will have done wonders for his confidence heading into the second half of the season. Gamble, however, responded in truly spectacular fashion across the remaining two races to ensure the spoils were shared. He swept around the outside of Antrobus at Old Hall to seize the race two lead and never relinquished it, before perfectly executing the restart in race 3 and pulling away to a near three-second margin of victory, his third win in the opening five races of the season.
The battle for AM class honours added another compelling layer to the Oulton weekend, with James Nicholas, Jamie Caudle, and Alex Duncan all sharing the spoils across the three encounters in a fiercely fought sub-class contest. Nicholas, a three-time race winner in the GT Academy during his time at Oulton Park, continued his excellent record at the Cheshire circuit before a difficult middle race was rescued by a strong AM class victory in the finale, a result that underlined his class and experience even on a tough weekend. Cameron Pratt-Thompson also impressed throughout the event, claiming the Sunoco Fastest Driver of the Weekend award with a new GT Championship lap record at Oulton Park, a timely reminder that he remains a genuine threat to the established order at the front of the field. Louis Darling and Orion SPR enjoyed a strong run of podium finishes across the weekend, while Lucie Hodgson and Elliot Foster both picked up valuable AM class silverware of their own. With the championship picture still taking shape and several drivers showing the pace to challenge at the front, Croft promises to be another fascinating instalment in what is shaping up to be a closely fought season.
Ginetta GT Academy
Luis Beilicke arrives at Croft as the championship’s dominant force, having extended his sensational start to the season with a brace of victories at Oulton Park to follow his Silverstone hat-trick. The Want2Race driver has now won four of the opening five races and set a new GT Academy lap record at Oulton with a blistering 1:49.621s effort, controlling both of his Oulton victories from pole position and shrugging off safety car restarts with the composure of a driver who knows exactly how to manage a race weekend.
Yet it was a moment of late drama in race three that handed the field a rare glimpse of vulnerability in the championship leader’s campaign. Tom Walker seized the overall lead from Beilicke with a brilliant move around the outside at Hislops, executing the pass with real conviction, only for a mechanical issue to force the points leader out of the race entirely just half a lap later. Walker held his nerve to secure his first overall victory of the campaign, denying Beilicke a perfect weekend and proving emphatically that the GTA Championship battle is only just getting started.
Ian Beaumont has emerged as Beilicke’s closest challenger among the rookie contingent, securing a string of strong qualifying and race results across the Oulton weekend that mark him out as a genuine threat for the remainder of the season, while Joe Ostholthoff and Connor Blackburn continue to provide stern competition, trading positions and points across every encounter. Ben Wiseman has also impressed with his ability to hold firm under pressure in close rookie battles, while Mark Mayall’s debut podium for Want2Race hinted at hidden pace yet to be fully unlocked. Lucas Theo’s storming drive through the field in race three, gaining six places on the opening lap alone after starting from the back, was one of the standout performances of the entire weekend and a sign of the strength in depth across this grid. With the rookie and GTA battles both wide open, Croft looks set to deliver another weekend of close, unpredictable racing from start to finish.
Ginetta Junior Championship powered by Sunoco Race Fuels
Oulton Park delivered one of the most significant weekends of the season so far for the Junior grid, as Harrison Mackie and Josh Watts became the latest names to join Ginetta Junior’s exclusive list of race winners, the 115th and 116th drivers in the championship’s history to do so. Mackie crossed the line first on the road in race one, only for a penalty to promote Watts to a maiden victory; the script then flipped in race two, with Mackie claiming his own breakthrough win after a penalty went in his favour. It was a poetic twist of fate that meant both young drivers left Cheshire standing with the maiden victory they had been chasing all season. For Performance One Motorsport, Watts’ success marked the team’s first overall victory in the Championship, making them the 20th different squad to win a race in the G40 era, a remarkable achievement in just their second season on the grid.
Out in front of the championship, however, it is Lewis Goff who continues to set the benchmark with an extraordinary run of form. Despite a qualifying session at Oulton that saw every one of his laps deleted for track limits, leaving him buried at the back of the grid, Goff produced a string of stunning recovery drives that have become the hallmark of his season. He charged from 25th to 4th in race one, then somehow bettered that with a fightback from 23rd to outright victory in race three, his sixth win of the campaign so far. It is the kind of relentless, never give up attitude and racecraft that title-winning seasons are built on, and it leaves his rivals with a serious puzzle to solve heading to Croft: how do you beat a driver who seems just as dangerous from the back of the grid as he is from the front row?
Riley Cranham, Jacob Ashcroft, and Melvin Kalousdian all remain firmly in the championship conversation and will be desperate to close the gap on home soil, while the Freshmans Cup is providing its own thrilling subplot beneath the headline battle, with Bailey Doughty extending his win tally to six for the season before Dominic Darling hit back to claim class honours in the Oulton finale. There is also a wonderfully personal story to follow at Croft. Performance One’s Noah Young arrived in the championship with no karting background of any kind, and yet has impressed all season with a string of brilliant overtaking drives, on three separate occasions climbing from outside the top 20 on the grid into the top ten by the chequered flag. With his father Ash now also competing on track in the GT Academy, the Youngs represent one of the paddock’s most heartening stories, a family discovering motorsport together, race weekend by race weekend.
With three championships, a host of breakthrough storylines, and several closely contested title fights all set to collide on Croft’s famous high-speed sweeps, Ginetta G-Fest promises to be one of the unmissable weekends of the 2026 season. From first-time winners proving their breakthroughs were no fluke, to a dominant rookie searching for redemption after his maiden defeat, to a Junior title race that continues to twist and turn with every passing round, there is a story for every fan to follow when the lights go out in North Yorkshire on 27 June. Croft has a long history of producing standout performances and dramatic twists of fortune, and with the form and momentum on display at Oulton Park, there is every reason to expect this weekend will be no exception.
