Former champion Roger Skeete (right) has started the 2003 motor sport season on top form. He comfortably won the Barbados Rally Club's (BRC) opening event of the season, the Tarmac Hill Sprint at Cherry Tree Hill on Sunday (February 9), beating the opposition by the best part of two seconds.

Driving the Texaco/Michelin/ McEnearney Quality/ Consolidated Finance/Carib Ford Escort WRC, Skeete recorded a time of 1m 24.347s on the last of his three official runs; his closest rival, Paul Bourne, could manage only 1:26.277 in the Banks/Pirelli/Texaco/Williams Industries Subaru Impreza WRC.

Many hundreds of fans lined the tricky and undulating course, many eager for their first sight of the new Automotive Art/Shell Helix Ford Focus WRC of Roger Mayers. Like Skeete, Mayers steadily improved his times during the morning, but a spark plug problem on his final run prevented him from a further improvement; he finished third with a time of 1:26.392.

There were disappointments also for two other crowd favourites, Cliff Roett and Jonathan Still (left), neither of whom made it further than the practice run. For Roett, driving the Toyota Celica GT4 formerly campaigned by his father, the late Richard Roett, a gearbox problem stopped his progress; for Still, it was a driveshaft failure on the Nescafe/Philips Lighting/Castrol-backed BMW M3.

Peter Thompson (right) won Production 4, the Group N class, in his Proton Wira, despite strong challenges from Geoff Noel (Mitsubishi Evo VI) and former British champion Harold Morley in his new Prodrive-built Subaru Impreza; Brian Gill failed to make it past the practice run in the Banks/Pirelli/Texaco/Williams Industries Subaru Impreza WRX.

Former BRC champion Derek Roach debuted the new Mini Cooper S, but a minor gearbox problem left him three seconds adrift of Freddie Gale (Toyota Starlet Turbo) in his class.

The event was the first to be officially timed by the new Rally Timing organisation, which has been sponsored by Automotive Art, Gale's Hatcheries, Garbage Master, McEnearney Quality, Nassco, Newmart Rentals, PB Events Ltd, Ripples, Shell and Simpson Motors.