Simon Tysoe and Monmouth boy Cliffy Simmons took an excellent 10th overall, third in class on the three-day Wales Rally GB National Rally in their Kumho tyre shod Escort RS1800.

The National Rally offered competitors a chance to compete over the same classic tests as their WRC counterparts, and the 100 places on offer were snapped up within a week, such was the popularity of the event.

Thirteen special stages lay ahead totalling some 112 competitive miles. Friday's opening leg consisted of three tests in the forests of Hafren, Sweet Lamb and Myherin.

Tysoe started steadily given the nature of three long days, but found the opening 20 miles of Hafren extremely slippery.

A broken sump guard after a heavy landing on the short Sweet Lamb test caused a few moments of concern and this was followed by an overshoot on the long 20-mile Myherin test, but with day one successfully negotiated they returned to service and overnight halt in Deeside.

With a lack of results due to a technical computer glitch, the crew worked out off other competitors' swapping times they were third historic overnight.

Leg two saw crews tackle the superb Welsh forests of Gartheniog, Dyfi and Dyfnant, which were bursting to the brim with spectators, before the day's final two runs around the beautiful Chirk Castle, another of the spectator-friendly rally fest stages.

Tysoe soon began to get into the groove on the fast sweeping roads of these mid-Wales forests, and enjoyed a trouble-free run over the three tests, closing the gap on second placed Tim Freeman in his Escort RS1800.

But with the final two stages around Chirk Castle delayed for well over an hour, due to the vast number of spectators trying to get into the venue, once the action got underway Tysoe dropped 10 seconds to Freeman over the two short tests due to lack of spotlights.

"We've chipped away at Tim all day to try to close the gap, only to lose that and more in here," said Simmons.

"We decided not to fit lights as we would have got through in daylight bar for the long delay.

"Simon just couldn't see, but tomorrow's another day and we'll push even harder to catch Tim, but I think David Stokes will be hard to catch."

The third and final day started off with three gravel stages – Dyfnant 2, Penllyn and finally Clocaenog 2, before another rally fest stage in Kinmel Park – and a final sting in the tail, 4kms of tarmac on the infamous Great Orme around the Llandudno headland.

The object of the day was to push hard to see if they could snatch second place from Freeman, and they started well with a string of fastest historic times but couldn't make any real inroads to the gap, and with only five competitive miles to go over the final three stages, decided to settle for a finish.

"It's been a good day with some fastest times, but we couldn't catch Tim, we've built our pace up over the three days, and it's been an excellent event – great stages, thousands of spectators out watching, a bit like the old days – we are chuffed to finish 10th overall and third historic given the high quality entry here this weekend. It's been great fun," said a delighted Simmons.

There wasn't such good news for Bob Morgan and Adrian Williams in the Winner Garage Skoda Fabia S2000 Evo.

After taking victory on the recent WLE Rally Time Trial, and a good pre-event test, they had high hopes of a strong finish in the national event but a blown turbo on the opening test in Hafren, curtailed their event early doors.

Scott Partridge had a last minute change of co-driver with Chris Ridge stepping in to replace the injured Alex Lee in the ex-Alistair McRae Subaru Impreza.

These two had a fairly trouble-free event to net 25th overall, 12th in class.

• Jason Morgan and Jack Walby finished the year in style with a superb third overall on Sunday's S&A Gas Premier Stages held entirely in the Clipstone forestry complex, in the Winner Garage Lancer Evo 6.