Last updated 19:35, Thursday, 08 January 2009

THIS weekend sees action in the North East with the first of the NESCRO historic rallies taking place.

AWARD: Peter Garforth at Scammonden Hill Climb in his Hawke

The Johnston Trophy is run by Berwick & DMC and uses a mixture of tests and regularities tomorrow afternoon and early evening, making some of it in the dark.

There are several WMC entries in the field with Robin Murray/Ron Palmer in the Mini Cooper S the best seed. The route is over some 70 miles in north Northumberland.

This is the first NESCRO event of the year and a full list of the programme is on the NESCRO website (www.nescro.co.uk) and on the Wigton MC website (www.wigtonmc.co.uk) which also has details of the full programme of events that the club is running in 2009.

The speed and historic rally championships continue, with the first speed event being on Good Friday at Teesside Autodrome, and the events continue until the final at Kames in early October.

The historic championship starts with the Croft Historic on February 1 followed a month later by the Saltire and then there is an event each month until November.

Historic cars are pre 1975 but many of the events also have classes for 1975 to 1981 cars.

With the main awards evening coming up soon – January 17 – it’s worth looking back over the main local championships whose awards will be presented on the night.

The Northern Speed Championship has been sponsored by TJ Services of Workington this year.

The 10-round championship was won by Peter Garforth in his Hawk after a consistent year at the front of the field. The events were made up of four hill climbs and six sprints taking place from Easter to October.

Class C1 for the smaller engined classics was won by Colin Sutherland in his Spitfire, while Peter Sewell won the C2 class in his MG B. Class three was well contested with Angus Buchan winning ahead of Chris Boyd and Paul Bowness.

The modified car class (M1) fell to Martyn Stott in his Lotus ahead of Mike Hunter’s Metro. The kit car class (M2) was won by Colin Birkbeck (Caterham), from Terry Coleman (Stryker) and Harry Moody (Westfield).

The up to 1400cc road car class (R1) saw Robert MacGillivray run out as winner in his Peugeot 205 from the 106R of Martin Peacock and the Micra of Stephen Palmer.

The over 1400cc road cars class (R2) was won by Kevin Hamilton (Mazda MX5) from Dennis Hope (MG F).

Loyalty awards will be presented to Sally Peacock, David Wiggins, Ant Lomas, Alistair Dundee, Paul Rigg, Malcolm MacKay and Darren Coleman.

The GK Group sponsored the Northern Historic Rally Championship run over eight rounds in the north of England and Scotland.

The winners were David Agnew and Graeme Mactavish in a Porsche 911 while the second-placed driver was Mike Smailes with his BMW 2002 and Bob Hargreaves was the second navigator.

His driver Ian Curwen (Mini Cooper) took third in the drivers section while Mike Garstang was the third navigator.

Loyalty awards go to David Marsden and Joe Norman.