World RX of Great Britain

The World RX of Great Britain moved to Silverstone for 2018 the relatively short and technical circuit provided a very different challenge to Lydden Hill. As he often does Johan Kristoffersson (Polo R) started slow but a great Sunday saw him qualify fastest for the semi finals. A 1st corner clash with his team mate Petter Solberg lead to a red flag which was fortunate for him. He went through to the final and took the overall victory with Andreas Bakkerud (Audi S1) 2nd and Sébastien Loeb (208 WRX) completing the podium. In the RX2 category Oliver Eriksson took victory and in the Americas Rallycross Tanner Foust (Beetle R) dominated to take victory.

Spring Sporting Trial

A glorious day in Southern Warwickshire saw the last event of the season before the summer break. Ian Wright took the win on the final pass of the hills, from close friend and rival Ian Veale. It had looked like a Veale win as he lead from the start, but a three on one of the final hills to Wright’s zero proved to be key as Wright finished on 11 points with Veale’s 13 points. Julian Fack was the best of the rest back on 24 points, completing the podium.

Blancpain GT Series Endurance – Silverstone

Another double header weekend saw us take in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance practice and qualifying, at Silverstone. Matthieu Vaxiviere / Jake Dennis / Nicki Thiim took the R-Motorsport Aston Martin V12 Vantage to pole position and converted that in to race victory on the Sunday too. Tristan Vautier / Adam Christodoulou / Raffaele Marciello were just over ten seconds back in the Mercedes-AMG Team Akka ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3. Completing the podium were Markus Palttala / Stephane Ortelli / Norbert Siedler in the Emil Frey Lexus Racing Lexus RC F GT3 after a hard fought battle for the final podium spot saw 3rd to 9th overall separated by less than 8 seconds.

Manx National Rally

The Manx National Rally was an event of huge contrasts as a deluge of rain hit the first loop of stages, on the Friday night, before glorious weather bathed the stages on Saturday. Jason Pritchard & Phil Clarke (Focus WRC) took their 4th win at the event, by over 3 minutes. The hard work was done on the opening night as Pritchard didn’t put a wheel wrong to lead by almost two minutes overnight. Daniel Harper & Chris Campbell (Mini JCW WRC) took a cautious approach to the wet conditions and were rewarded with 2nd overnight. Peter Taylor & Andrew Roughead (Fiesta WRC) were 3rd overnight, after denying Pritchard a clean sweep of stage wins, but they did not start the Saturday after being excluded.

Tour Series – Redditch

JLT Condor kicked off their OVO Energy Tour Series title defence with victory at the opening round in Redditch to pull on the leaders’ green jerseys, while British Cycling’s development squad Team Breeze took the honours in the women’s premiere. The men’s win on the night went to Team WIGGINS’ Gabriel Cullaigh, who outsprinted Tobyn Horton (Madison Genesis) and Tom Moses (JLT Condor) from a select group of six riders who contested the finish on the 1.4-kilometre Worcestershire circuit.

Tour de Yorkshire

We made a one day visit to the Tour de Yorkshire for the Richmond to Scarborough stage. On paper it was due to be a sprinters stage but there were some lumps and bumps to deal with. In the end Max Walscheid took the stage win for Team Sunweb. The race itself though was decided on a brutal final day stage which saw Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing Team) come home in 2nd place on the stage but that was more than enough to secure a deserved overall race win.