Ross Motor Club duo Dan Gray and Matt Rogers did their Morris Lubricants 1400 championship chances no harm with an excellent 2nd 1400 home on last weekend's Nicky Grist Stages. The Quinton Motor Club-organised event was the latest round of both BTRDA and Welsh series and saw 145 crews assemble at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells for 45 competitive miles in the forests of Halfway, Crychan, Monument and everyone's favourite stage Route 60, two loops of the four tests interspersed with a midday service at the Showground. For Gray and Rogers it was a fairly trouble-free day, the only real issue was incorrect tyre pressures on the first run of Halfway. They also set fastest 1400 time in ss5, and brought the IM Gray Plumbing-backed Peugeot 106 home 30th overall, second 1400 and with a good haul of championship points. Bob Morgan and Ade Williams continued the development of the new Winner Garage Skoda Fabia S2000 Evo. Despite three spins during the day due to excessive tyre wear, they enjoyed the stages, but went off on the final stage dropping two places to 22nd overall, fifth in class. "Great stages these, we went off on the last stage trying a bit too hard," said Williams. "We've got some more work to do on the car before our next event, and we'll try some different tyres." Chepstow duo Sacha Kakad and Andrew Price continued their domination of class N3 in the BTRDA series, with yet another class win and 41st overall in their Ford Fiesta ST. Tony Williams with Karen Phelps on the notes took 45th overall and fourth in class in their Escort RS. Simon Pickering together with his usual co-driver Colin Jenkins in the Dave Jenkins Motorsport-run mk1 Escort RS1600 picked up more useful Welsh historic championship points, despite having a slight misfire on the morning loop of stages due to a coil problem, leaving them fourth in class at service. With this rectified they started to reel in their two class rivals, but sadly stage 7 was cancelled when a cattle grid was broken and they had to settle for third in class and 54th overall. Welsh historic championship class rivals and fellow locals Jason Gardner and the experienced Graham Cox in the Brecon View Plumbing Escort RS1600 took 62nd overall and fourth in class. Steve Jenkins and Mark Vaughan in the DJ Vaughan Concrete Products 1400 Citroen Saxo finished 98th overall and seventh in class. Sadly for Mark Griffiths and his Ross co-driver Mike Jode in the Griffiths Engineering Escort RS had a short lived event when they hit an un-cautioned nasty bump dip on stage 2, instantly breaking the steering rack. They were one of seven or eight crews who came to grief in the same place. This caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to competitors' cars and was certainly the talking point of the event. The overall event was finally won by the Ford Focus WRC of Paul Bird and Aled Davies by just six seconds from the Subaru S11 WRC of Scottish duo Dave Weston Jnr and Kirsty Riddick with the previous round's victors Steve Perez and Paul Spooner in another Focus WRC taking third overall.