RALLY duo Josh Payton and co-driver Jamie Vaughan continued their pursuit of the Motoring News Circuit Rally Championship with yet another class win on Bank Holiday Monday's Neil Howard Memorial Stages held entirely in the confines of the Oulton Park race circuit.

The event attracted an extremely high quality entry with it being the opening round of the British Rally Championship with 150 cars doing the 50 miles on offer, writes Paul Willetts.

The event was somewhat frustrating for the crew, with time consuming spins on six of the eight stages on offer while dust on the gravel left visibility sparse.

However, they achieved their goal and won their class by nearly two minutes and finished 36th overall.

"It just didn't click today, and we lost so much time with spins, the two clean stages we had we set top 20 times against a vast array of 4wd machinery, but we'll take the class win and move on." said Vaughan.

Hereford driver Phil Skipp teamed up with Ross co-driver Russell Joseph in the Vauxhall Astra coming home 97th & 15th in class.

The Neil Howard Stages was Vaughan's second event in 48 hours after he teamed up with Ryan Fagan in his 2.5 Escort for Saturday's EMCOS Red Dragon IT stages at Down Ampney.

The event offered some 73 miles on the old airfield.

But for Fagan and Vaughan differential failure on stage four ended their day.

Hereford co-driver Dan Petrie teamed up once more with West Walian Steffan Davies in his 2.5 Escort, and despite a few spins they had a great run to fourth overall and second in class, but couldn't catch the V8 Escort G3 of Simon Mansell on the fast stages.

Another local crew destined for silverware were Steve Pritchard and Dan Evans, in the 1400 Vauxhall Nova, for the Allensmore driver turned co-driver it was his third class win on the three different Down Ampney events this year with three different drivers.

The pair had a faultless run setting ninth fastest on the opening test.

Ross duo Martin Taylor & Steve Suckling had their best run this year finishing 19th overall and third in class in the 1600 Nova.

Sadly gearbox failure ended young Harry Pinchin's day together with Colin Jenkins in their Peugeot 106.

Sunday's John Overend Memorial Stages saw the opening round of the Junior 1000 series, where Coleford's Mike Jode teamed up with young Jack Birch on his first ever event, and they came away with 10th overall.