In a dramatic finish to the season which began last September, the duel for the Hewison Trophy Autotest Championship ended yesterday in a tie, with the two protagonists equal on points after 12 counting rounds, and as they had identical scores event by event, the tie deciding regulation was unable to separate them.

Defending title holder Ian White from Kilkenny and his challenger, Meath’s Guy Foster, were level on points as they went into the final double header weekend organised by Carrick-on-Suir MC in Waterford city, and they scored a win and a second place each, with White opening the battle by taking a 3.8 second victory on Saturday.

However, yesterday started badly for the Kilkenny man, with a mistake on the opening test costing him six seconds to Foster, and he was never able to recover from this, although he did manage to reduce the gap to 2.2 by the finish. Local Waterford driver Paddy Power finished third on Saturday, almost 40 seconds behind the lead battle, while Darren Quille from Kildare took that position yesterday.