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After a trip over the Pennines, a glorious sunny day welcomed everyone to Harewood. Tim Mason joined the fray in his 2 litre Reynard having spent Saturday at the Harewood club meeting. The main absentees were Paul Haimes and Allan Warburton after an off at Willow in morning practice.

A new class record for Adam Fleetwood led the way to the first run off, as 11 of the larger engine cars would do battle with Phil Cooke (another class record today) in his 1.6 Force. The temperature had now warmed up quite a bit (all the class runs taking place in the afternoon) and many runners found it difficult to get round the twisty bits near the start as fast as before. Simon Durling¹s early lead was overtaken by Mike Dean. Ben Butterfield was then on course for a good time but spun at Orchard before Roger Moran lowered the fastest time to 53.07. Graeme Wight was uncharacteristically slow with a 52.65, still taking the lead but only third fastest at the split before the farmyard. Adam Fleetwood had no such concerns though just nipping inside his old course record by 0.01 secs to take another win.

The afternoon pattern seemed to be a bit slower on the newly resurfaced track as Phil Cooke was again the only smaller engined car to qualify. Adam Fleetwood didn¹t suffer from any track slowness in qualifying though and took his record down to 50.36, a second ahead of Wight to make the outcome of the run off seem a foregone conclusion. Willem Toet returned to the day before¹s form with a fine 51.90 before Wight stuck in a superb 50.59 under the old record. An upset win now looked quite possible but with Adam obviously having to push very hard, he did the business yet again with another record time of 50.29. It was just a shame that the banking was relatively empty at the end of the day as the final drama unfolded.

Battle is rejoined in two weeks time at Gurston Down on May 30th.

Many thanks to Richard Jones for the report.