Wigton MC ventured east of the Pennines  to run the annual Good Friday Sprint at Teesside Autodrome. Round 1 of the 2009 Northern Sprint Championship. In a change from previous years this event was run on a 1 lap format instead of 2 (although the coming May 25th event is a double lapper). This made for a frantic turn around and a total of 10 runs per car in 5 hours of racing, aided by the predicted heavy rain staying away until the very last run.
 Recently married Rebecca Lyth (Leeds) had an unexpected surprise on her first run of the day when the bonnet of her Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GTi ( M1) parted company with the rest of the car. Other runners to have problems included Mike Hunter (M1) who spun his Metro on cold tyres and Ant Lomas (Ravenglass) whose MG Midget suffered a spin following a lever arm damper failure on his front suspension. Paul Norris returned to the Northern Speed Championship after a years lay off and took the class win in M1 in his extremely powerful Talbot Sunbeam Cosworth.
Drew Dawson took overall honours in his DJ Firehawk single seat racer. local interest lay with Paul Rigg (Aycliffe) in his MGF VVC, Kurt Ramsden (Guisborough) in his V8 engined Westfield GT in Class M2, Geoff Dale took the Stockton motor club honours in his Sylva Fury (also M2) ahead of   Martin & Sally Peacock (Norton) in their Peugeot 106 rallye (R1) which will next be seen on the ALM autodrome stages on May 4th.
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