Ian Burne, from Ireland, recorded the fastest time in this year’s Sandocross.

A CLEAR blue sky greeted 45 competitors as they arrived for this year’s Sandocross held on Weston sands.

This is the only motorsport event run on sand run in the UK mainland and as such always attracts a good entry, which this year included two visitors from Galway, Ireland.

Of the 45 runners, 15 were Weston Motor Club members, of which five were competing for the first time. This event was the first round of the Southern Counties Autocross Championship and many of the competitors were registered for this Championship.

The course was laid out on Weston Sands over a distance of 1,100 metres and the practice session gave competitors the opportunity of checking out the conditions and their car before the official timed runs commenced.

The 45 runners were divided into eight different classes dependent upon the type of car they were driving.

It was in the small road car class that the new boys were competing and they quickly adapted to this unique surface. Martin Simmons in a Rover 414 was the best of these five and he finished fourth in class at the end of the day.

Class A2 for the larger engined road cars saw 16 drivers attempting to get the fastest time with some great drives from Ian Howard and Tim Comer from Devon and Tony Miller from Kewstoke.

The honours went to Howard, but there was only two seconds between them. Ian Drewitt, James Cardwell, Glenn Alexander and Andrew Booker were the Weston drivers.

Class D saw Chris Butler from Locking in his MG Maestro up against Roger Brunt from Trowbridge and 17-year-old Daniel Rooke in a Citroen AXGTi. All three have won the championship in the past and Rooke came out the winner in this battle by 10 seconds.

Class E2 saw the 4-WD productions cars such as Mitsubishi Lancer Evo’s and Subaru Imprezas and local man Alan Holly, back competing after a couple of years break, in the Evo. Alan won the class by the narrowest of margins - 0.7 seconds - to take the class from Simon Ford in an Impreza.

In the Specials class, spectators and competitors were treated to a fantastic battle between five eager drivers including David Fallon and Ian Burne from Ireland, Stephen Spear from Devon, in a car previously owned by previous winner Colin Anderson, last year’s champion Mark Tredwell from Witney, in his self-built and engineered Mini Pick-Up and Richard Davies, another previous championship winner from Haverfordwest, in his Hando-engined Special.

The drivers excelled themselves, but at the end of the day there could only be one winner and Ian Burne from Ireland put up an amazing time to win by 1.5 seconds from his fellow countryman, David Fallon.

Weston member Richard Davies took the third spot from Mark Tredwell and Stephen Spear.