The final round of this year’s Mini and Cat 1 Cups took place at the Anglesey race circuit Trac Mon, writes Clive King.

Five Mini crews made the journey on Friday through heavy rain and high winds to have their cars checked over ready to start early Saturday, and run through into darkness. The following day would be a further six stages that would take us through to early evening.

Leading the cars away was Clive King and Anton Bird, one place behind Shane Gamble with Julia Perry. Craig King and Russell Joseph were next, Harvey Stevens and Craig Hardiman. The quick Mini Clubman of Thomas Welsby with Amy Melling were the last of the Mini crews and the organisers had seeded us together.

Shane stopped the clocks quickest one second faster than Clive with Craig and then Thomas a few seconds back.

Stage two Shane took 12 seconds off the rest of the Minis to hold a 13 second advantage after just over 11 miles off stages.

With service Clive changed tyres and on the next stage stopped the rot, with a time 7 seconds faster than second place Shane who was just in front of Craig.

All of the crew’s times were within a few seconds of each other, one over shoot and four Minis would take time off you.

The next stage Shane and Clive set the same time, but on the following stage Clive pulled within 4 seconds of Shane, with two stages to go run in darkness, this would finish Saturday’s stages, ready for Sunday.

Thomas’s car had picked up a misfire which he thought could be an air leak, after removing the carb he decided to call it a day and retired.

Harvey’s fine run came to an end with a bang, when the diff broke sending oil all over the track surface.

Craig, better known as The Prince of Darkness, as he normally thrashes everyone when it gets dark, set a time of 8.33 beating Shane by 21 seconds, but Clive managed to better his time by 1 second which put him for the first time, in the lead.

The last stage got cancelled due to Harvey’s oil, much to Shane’s relief as he was struggling with the lack of light.

Day two started dry and sunny and was remarkable in that the three remaining cars on most of the stages were separated by 2 or 3 seconds, everyone was on the limit, pushing their cars as far as they could.

At the final control Clive and Anton had done enough to take the win and the Mini Cup championship.

Shane and Julia had held onto second, clinching the Mini Cup category 1 class.

Craig with Russell tried all day to overall Shane and Clive but proved too difficult, with the loss of time yesterday.

Harvey Stevens won the Questmead brake pad award with Shane Gamble picking up the Snap-on prize and Thomas Welsby going back to South Wales clutching some Exol Oil.