Trackrod Forest Stages

Another fine day up in North Yorkshire saw an exciting finish to the final round of the BTRDA Championship. With the title decided in the favour of Matt Edwards, it was all to play for (especially as Edwards was in a Fiat 131 in the historic section of the rally). Charlie Payne & Carl Williamson (Fiesta) went fastest through the first two stages to open up a lead but Mat Smith & Giles Dykes (Fiesta R5) stormed back with fastest stage times on the remaining 3 stages. With Langdale to go the margin was just over 2 seconds in the favour of Payne but Smith took a superb victory by 1.2s on his 4WD debut. Steve Petch & Michael Wilkinson (Fiesta WRC) completing the podium almost a minute further back.

British GT – Donington

History was made at Donington Park today (September 22/23) when Flick Haigh and Jonny Adam finished fourth on the road to claim the 2018 British GT title. Haigh becomes the first woman to win the series’ premier class whilst Adam now stands alone as the only driver to win three overall championships. Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen took a second victory of the season in their Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini after finishing second on the road but benefitting from a post-race 30-second time penalty handed to Mark Farmer and Nicki Thiim. The TF Sport Aston Martin therefore finished runner-up with the podium completed by ERC Sport’s Mercedes-AMG shared by Lee Mowle and Yelmer Buurman.

Daventry Triathlon

Time for something different as we visited a local event and made our first venture in to the World of triathlons. The Rugby triathlon club organised Daventry Triathlon saw the slowest ranked swimmers start out first, in groups of 5. The staggered start saw over 200 competitors take to the startline, with the action starting at 8am and the last competitor finishing their run just under 5 hours later.

Tour of Britain

There was a real buzz around the Tour of Britain this year as it saw 4 times Tour de France winner Chris Froome take the startline along with this years winner Geraint Thomas, but neither were looking for the overall classification. Instead they were supporting Sky team mate Wout Poels. As far as the race goes Poels did win the queen stage in the Lake District but it was a superb race performance from Julian Alaphilippe of Quickstep that saw him take overall victory by 17 seconds. Poels was 2nd with Lotto Jumbo’s Primoz Roglic completing the podium places. In total we caught three stages with stage 7 being the most remarkable as Ian Stannard got in the breakaway and soloed to a hard fought victory on the races longest stage, at 215kms.

Woodpecker Rally

Dusty conditions greeted the crews as Matt Edwards & Darren Garrod (Fiesta R5) looked to seal the 2018 Gold Star title. They started out well by setting fastest times on all of the opening 3 stages. Luke Francis & John Roberts (Fiesta WRC) were 2nd after setting 2nd fastest times on all 3 stages and in a show of uniform performance, Steve Petch & Michael Wilkinson (Fiesta WRC) were 3rd with 3rd fastest times across the 3 stages. Francis then sent fastest time on stage 4 but still had 27 seconds to make up. Edwards went fastest on the next two stages to hold almost a minutes advantage and could afford to drop 29 seconds on the final stage, as he sealed the title with a round to spare.