Worcester driver Tim Matthews made an excellent debut in his first drive in the Sports 2002 Championship at Croft in Yorkshire.

Driving a Ford engined Royale Matthews was racing in a one-hour enduro with a compulsory five-minute stop for refuelling.

Qualifying sixth Matthews suffered too much wheel-spin at the start. But he started to make up time on the leaders eventually catching the second-placed driver.

An over-ambitious overtaking manoeuvre resulted in a spin dropping him to the back of the field.

Charging hard, Matthews again began to make up time until the pit stop. Refuelling problems cost him time and although he then produced consistently quicker laps and passed several cars, he ended up fourth overall and second in class.

Matthews said: "It was a great weekend and these little Le Mans type cars are a lot of fun to drive.

"The end result was quite good considering I hadn't raced the car before and had never driven at Croft. My mistakes cost me a lot of time though and I'll have to sort those out before the next round at Brands Hatch in three weeks."