STEVE PEREZ and Richard Hill shared the major spoils at the Trackrod Rally Yorkshire in Ryedale.

Almost 160 crews contested the Trackrod Historic Cup and the Trackrod Forest Stages in the rally, based at Pickering Showground.

Ford Escort driver Hill, from Chesterfield, came from behind with a late surge to overhaul 2013 Historic Cup winner Matt Edwards on the final stage and secure victory by 7.4 seconds.

Perez, also from Chesterfield, fended off a strong late challenge from fellow Ford Focus World Rally Car driver Paul Bird to win by an even narrower margin.

Hill and Welsh navigator Steffan Evans’ tenacious late charge finished the season the way they had started it.

The Escort driver had won the Red Kite Rally - the first round of the West Wales Rally Spares RAC Championship - but trailed last year’s champion Edwards, from Colwyn Bay, throughout the opening four stages, and was nine seconds down going into the final two tests.

Hill was fastest in Dalby to trim the deficit to two seconds and then repeated the act over the longest stage - 10.5 miles at Langdale - beating Edwards by nine seconds.

The rally began in dramatic fashion on Friday evening when the darkness claimed the victory hopes of three of the fancied starters in the Historic Cup.

Malton’s reigning Motoscope Northern Historic champion Steve Bannister, three times overall Trackrod winner in the late 1980s, saw his chances of a third successive title fade when his Escort Mk2 crashed out at speed less than a mile from the end of the opening Staindale stage.

Bannister and co-driver Louise Rae, second historic crew last year, were not seriously injured but the car was rendered undriveable by the accident.

Before that, record breaking triple REIS/BTRDA Silver Star champion Matthew Robinson, of Ripon, saw his hopes of victory dashed when also leaving the road in a similar aged Escort.

Whitby’s Ryan Champion, Trackrod winner in 2006, also suffered a frustrating evening when his Porsche 911 snapped a fan belt forcing him to stop and take a maximum time penalty on stage two in Dalby Forest.

Robinson recovered to post the fastest time on Saturday’s opening stage in Gale Rigg while Champion proved quickest through the next test in Cropton, although neither were able to make sufficient inroads to trouble Hill, Edwards and third-placed Tim Pearcey (Escort, Harrogate).

Perez’s victory on the Trackrod Forest Stages, which took place over five tests wholly on Saturday, sets up a superb finale to the REIS/BTRDA series of which it formed round eight of nine.

He and Bird now share three wins apiece and will go into next month’s Cambrian Rally fighting for the title.

Dave Weston Junior (Aberdeen, Subaru Impreza) and Stephen Petch (Hamsterley, Ford Fiesta) vied with the two Focus’s all day before having to settle for third and fourth respectively.

RAF Fylingdales-based Marc Paynter and Stacey Hadlum rushed back from Iceland to win the Armstrong Massey Land Rover Challenge and a battle between six Armed Forces Wolfs which ran directly behind the Historic Cup.