Photo By Gordon CrawfordThe all Escort battle at the front of the Pirelli Historic Rally continued as the cars returned to Kielder for a second loop of three stages with Julian Reynolds and Nick Elliott continuing to set the pace.

Reynolds sneaked ahead by just two seconds on Shepherdshield but his joy was short lived as he was sidelined by mechanical gremlins on the Pundershaw loop.

That left Elliott out in front, with Will Onions the best of the rest, closely followed by Tim Pearcey. Rupert Lomax continued to lead category Two although David Stokes was pushing him all the way and Belgian ace Stefan Stouff was also really flying.

The final stage, a fast, flowing affair, produced the predictable “Sting in the tale”, notably for Rupert Lomax whose Escort ground to a halt, Alan Walker stopped for some 6 minutes, David Kirkby ( Escort MK1) struggled through with just to usable gears and Tim Pearcey lost time with a puncture.

David Stokes pushed hard for the Category Two class but Stefan Stouff pushed harder to keep the reigning BHRC champion at bay, with Peter Smith, out in an Escort while his Opel is reshelled, taking third place. Meanwhile, Graham Waite (Volvo Amazon) and Rikki Profftt (Porsche) went head to head in Category One, Waite shaded it by a narrow margin with the Lotus Cortina of Simon Wallis taking third place.

So, after an unusually dry and sunny day in Kielder, it was a delighted Nick Elliott and Chris Brooks who had yet another good Kielder based event, collecting maximum points and consolidating their category lead in the Dunlop/ WONAGO MSA British Rally Championship.