Burnley optician Neil Bye was back in rally action last weekend co-driving Paul Alexander on the Adrian Barker Memorial Trophy Stages at the Swynnerton Army Training Grounds in Staffordshire.

The pair were debuting a Ford Escort Mk2 that Alexander has spent three years building.

All went well initially as they set the ninth fastest time, quickest in class, on the opening stage, and then moved up the leaderboard to sixth overall on the second stage – leading their class by over a minute by the end of stage eight.

With just two night stages remaining they were targeting a top five finish before it all went wrong and the car crashed off the road and down an embankment.

Fortunately the car came to a stop wedged between two trees, but for which it would have surely rolled, and the crew escaped shaken but not hurt.

The car’s resting place was so precarious that it took the recovery crew over two hours to get it back up the banking and onto the track.

Bye said: “Paul couldn’t hear me over the engine noise.

“We’d recognised the problem earlier in the day and decided something would have to be done to deaden the noise before the next rally but there’s a lot more to do now.

“It’s a great car though as our times today proved.”

The rally was won by Mark Jasper and Guy Foster in the Legend Fires Metro 6R4.