Harry Flatters Rally

A pleasant day up on the ranges saw drama at the top of the field, on the Harry Flatters. It all started on stage 1 when Damian Cole & Craig Drew (Fiesta WRC) dropped the best part of a minute, when they were well up on the field as they passed our location. A few changes at service followed but at the lunch break they were outside the top 3 and 31 seconds down on leaders Andy Fraser & Michael Calvert (Darrian T90 V6). With 25 seconds chipped off on stage 3 and another 16 seconds on stage 4, Cole was in the lead for the final stage. He duly set fastest time to win by 29 seconds but there was drama behind.

National Circuit Race Championships – Birmingham

Our first visit to the British national circuit race championships was a good night out as Eileen Roe and Chris Lawless sprinted to the women’s and men’s titles respectively in Birmingham. Lares-Waowdeals Women Cycling Team rider Roe crossed the line ahead of Drop Cycling’s Alice Barnes and defending champion Nicola Juniper. The title is Roe’s second after the Scot won in 2014. Twenty-year-old Lawless led home a JLT Condor one-two-three ahead of Russ Downing and Jon Mould.

International GT Open – Silverstone

A familiar venue but a new event for us as we took in the International GT Open weekend. With a mixture of open wheel, prototypes and closed top GT cars across 4 separate categories, each with multiple races, our attention was always going to be drawn to the GT series. In the first race it was Craig Dolby & Tomas Enge who took their Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 to victory, in the sunshine of Saturday afternoon. The overcast conditions of Sunday, added to the revised handicap system based upon race 1, saw Salih Yoluc & Euan Hankey take a comfortable win in their Aston Martin Vantage GT3. Whilst the fields may have been small, the racing across all the classes was good to watch.

AWDC Hill Rally

In what proved to be poor conditions for the 2nd week running, in Wales, we went to Walters Arena for our first visit to the AWDC Hill Rally. Run to rally timings rather than a safari schedule the event allowed for multiple stage layouts and when a particularly muddy section just after J3 had played havoc with a number of runners, the route was altered and the crews had a new challenge. Sadly Chris Bird & Amanda Hammond missed a stage in their glorious sounding Milner R5 which pretty much left Greg Clement & Tom Aubrey (Lofthouse Freelander) as the class of the field.

Nicky Grist Stages

With the BRC joining the Nicky Grist Stages it would be easy to get distracted by the headline act. Being loyal BTRDA regulars it was good to see how they measured up against the British rallying elite. Luke Francis & John Roberts (Evo IX) shone as always and took a classy BTRDA victory by exactly a minute from Stephen Petch & Michael Wilkinson (Fiesta R5+). With a number of top BTRDA crews failing to make the finish it was Paul Benn & Richard Cooke who were home in 3rd place, in what is now an ageing Focus WRC at 14 years old.