The Midland Automobile club starts its new hillclimb season at Shelsley Walsh this weekend with one-day meetings tomorrow and on Sunday.

A full entry tomorrow at the historic Teme Valley venue includes classes for saloon, sports and single seater racing cars.

Entries include Hereford's Deryk Young in the blisteringly fast four-litre Dallara in which he made best time of the day twice at the hill last season.

Also competing will be six times hillclimb champion Tony Marsh who drives the Cosworth powered Gould.

The day also features one-make classes for historic Frazer Nashes, Morgans and Porsches.

In the pre-war years G.N. and Frazer Nash cars were dominant at Shelsley and their most successful driver, Basil Davenport was born 100 years ago this year. To commemorate this his widow Lily will unveil a memorial to him during the lunch break.

Sunday will see one-make classes for Westfield, Ginetta and Triumph cars in addition to a similar selection of sports and single seaters including the rapid Young in his 650bhp Dallara single seater.

Other local drivers likely to go very quickly are Ken Sims from Malvern in his 6R4 Metro Turbo, also a previous best time of day man, Hugh Teagle (Droitwich) in his Pilbeam and Paul Matty (Shelsley Kings) in a Lotus.

On both days practice starts at 9.30am with the competition beginning at 1.30pm.

Spectator entrance, with access to the whole hill and paddock, is £10 on each day.

The first British Hill Climb Championship meeting of the season is on June 7-8.

The highlight of the season is a three-day Festival of Hill Climbing from August 15-17.

Shelsley Walsh was first used for hillclimbing in 1905 and is the oldest motor sport event in the world that still uses its original course.