A round of the German ADAC Rallye Masters and ADAC Junior Cup, the Tarmac event had ten special stages within the 293 Km route, and had attracted an entry of 97 cars.

Effectively a two day event and in common with most continental rallies, Friday was taken up initially with documentation, and then a full reconnaissance of the stages at no more that 70kph.

The field was led away on Saturday morning by German driver Anton Werner - the winner in '07 and '06, and looking for a hatrick in his Porsche 911 GT3.

Car 3 was British driver Mark Higgins, the former British Champion at the wheel of the Bill Gwynne Motorsport development MG S2000 which is backed by Calum Macleod's Royal Aero Group concern.

Macleod himself was seeded at car 24 - his ex-Carlos Sainz Impreza converted to full Tarmac rally specification for this event.

The first stage set the seal on the remainder of the event for those three – Werner setting the fastest time to lead the event, recording eight fastest times, second fastest on the other two, and leading the rally throughout the day in the Porsche to score his hatrick.

For Calum Macleod, the first stage saw mechanical gremlins set in when he suddenly lost the use of fourth gear part way through.

Macleod had been eager to show well on this event, and elected to continue although fully aware that changing up from 3rd to 5th gear was inevitably going to cost him a lot of time over the course of the rally – many of the stages having corners where 3rd was too low a gear, and where 5th was off the engine's power band.

For full report, see this week's 'Gazette'.