BALA and District Motor Club's latest event collected nearly £3,000 for Wales Air Ambulance.

The Minafon Garage Gareth Hall Memorial Rally, held at the Ranges Motorsports Centre in Trawsfynydd, raised £2,950 for the charity.

The great sum was raised by a combination of former works driver Geoff Jones once again raffling off his navigators seat, spectator car park gate money, donations by North Wales Honda, the Forest Experience Rally School and other generous donations from friends of the event.

This takes the total raised by the club for this charity to in excess of £25,000 in recent years.

The previous day’s rain had left the roads very slippery and victory on the first stage went to the popular Denbigh crew of Will Rowlands and Rich Birch, indeed it was a lead that they would hold throughout the event to take a well-received rally win at the end of the day.

In the over 2 litre class it would be another Ford Escort that would take the class win in the hands of Gary Thomas and Ben Ruff, with Ross Leach / Glenn Mercer and local Bala crew Huw and Phil Roberts coming home second and third in class. The next class for up to 2 litre cars was taken by Geoff Jones and his raffle winning navigator Bob Morgan who had travelled up from Coleford to do the event, 2nd and 3rd in class were the local crews of Guy Woodcock / Dave Williams and Dave Pritchard / Ilan Pritchard who were debuting a new Ford Escort on the event, which also won the best presented Ford award.

The Road Rally Class was taken by Kevin Kerr / Dan Jones and followed home by Denbigh driver Brynli Thomas and Catrin Price, rounding the class off were Richard Morgan / James Martin from Aberystwyth. Class 2 for cars with engines up to 1600cc fell to the brother and sister crew of Chris Phillips and Sarah Hughes, with Martyn Quant from Llangollen and Pwllheli based navigator Chris Evans taking 2nd.

The small engine class for up to 1400cc cars was taken by Betws GG’s Hefin Lloyd Davies and Rhyl based navigator Rich Jones, with another local crew – Kelvin Evans and Jamie Atherton taking 2nd followed by trainee stunt driver Lee Wilson and navigator Chris Row in 3rd. The rally also welcomed the Mini Cooper Challenge to the event for the first time with 7 crews taking the start, the winners were Mark Livesay and Graham Brown with Gordon Davies / Tina Horsefield and Mark and Carl Norwood taking 2nd and 3rd in class respectively