TOMMI Meadows made a return to the Junior 1000 rally championship to finish sixth overall on the Dale Stages.

Meadows, who has recently started the build of a new car, was in confident mood after a good result at the same Haverfordwest venue last year.

Unfortunately, the conditions were against the 15-year-old from the very start of the day.

“The weather was very warm and bone dry,” said Tommi, who lives in West Bradford, near Clitheroe.

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“I prefer it when the surface is wet and slippery because it acts as a sort of power balancer and narrows the gap between my car and the faster Citroens,” he said.

Nevertheless, the enthusiastic teenager and one-off co-driver for the event, Jamie Foster, set some promising pace, helped by a new TAROX brake set-up to sit fifth overall after the first loop of stages.

However, Oxfordshire driver Tom Williams was only a single second behind in his professionally-built Micra, meaning that a heated battle would ensue throughout the afternoon.

With stages five and six cancelled due to an accident, this left only two stages between Meadows and what would be a pleasing top-five finish given the conditions which did not suit the driver or car.

However, the car running ahead of the pair on the road overshot a corner, getting stuck in a ditch. Meadows and Foster were forced to crawl past to be as safe as possible, whilst the previous rejoined the stage before any other cars came past, meaning only Tommi’s time was affected.

A big push on stage eight would be in vain for the pair, as they could only manage to pull back one second from Williams, therefore finishing sixth overall and one second back from the top five.

Meadows thanks his sponsors A-Frame Engineering, TAROX Brakes, Cybox Exhausts, Fuchs Lubricants and Proflex Shock Absorbers for their help.