A CAPACITY crowd at Barbon was treated to spectacular driving as the British Hillclimb Championship circus moved to Cumbria.

Track and weather conditions were perfect for an assault on the four-year-old outright hill record of 20.86 seconds set by David Grace.

Current Championship leader Adam Fleetwood posted two runs below this, earning himself one of the coveted Barbon Stars as he took it down to 20.51 seconds in the first of his two fastest-12 runs, clearly fully at home in the big V8 Gould.

The faster cars reached nearly 140mph on the main straight and Graeme Wight Junior was using every bit of the narrow ribbon of tarmac and some of the grass to try to close the gap to Fleetwood.

Still running the glorious-sounding Opel-based Cosworth V6, Wight Jr has a significant horsepower deficit that he hopes to rectify when he wheels out his new V10 machine later in the season.

The top two didn't have all of the fun and Willem Toet (the BAR F1 team's aerodynamicist) was consistently quick and held third in both Championship run-offs.

In his new carbon-fibre chassis OMS, Trevor Willis may have only had two-litre Vauxhall power behind him, but still mixed it with the much larger cars and survived a scary moment when he ran on to the grass at over 100mph.

In the remaining classes, the story was remarkably similar where a further three records fell. Class 12's 12-year-old record finally tumbled to Phil Cooke in the Suzuki Hayabusa motorbike-engined Force with a time of 22.77 seconds.

The Class 14 record from May 2000 went to Graeme Wight Jr with a time of 20.95 seconds and Broughton-in-Furness driver, Peter Speakman, lowered his own Class 15 Historic/Sports racing record set last year to 31.69 seconds.

Adding a new dimension to the crowd's enjoyment this year was a huge lorry-mounted LED screen which relayed the startline activity to the Lafone hairpin crowd at the top of the hill.

Organisers Westmorland Motor Club were delighted with the response to this innovation and are looking at the possibility of it becoming a regular feature.

Championship results Round Five: 1 A. Fleetwood, Gould, 20.53sec; 2 G. Wight Jnr, Gould GR51-V6, 20.92; 3 W. Toet, Pilbeam MP88, 21.38.

Round Six:: 1 A. Fleetwood, Gould, 20.80; 2 G. Wight Jnr, Gould GR51-V6, 20.93; 3 W. Toet, Pilbeam MP88 21.27.