Castle Combe Racing Club crowned its first champions of the year on Bank Holiday Monday when Jason Cooper took the circuit’s Saloon Car championship and Ben Norton the Formula Ford at the A Plant Lux Sportscar Raceday.

Yatton Keynell’s Cooper, 21, who only started racing last year, building his 1.4 litre Fiesta into a contender right from the start.

And with the final round on October 3, his class win was enough to give him an unassailable lead, taking him to a higher level than his father Alan, who runs the circuit’s Racing School.

Cooper senior competed for more than ten years in the Castle Combe Formula Ford 1600 championship as well as the National series but was never able to win a championship outright, although his brother Martin - Jason’s uncle - managed it at Combe in 1984.

Cooper’s plans for 2010 are undecided, though a move to the national Fiesta championship is possible.

He finished 26 seconds ahead of his closest rival, taking his little car into the top 10.

Reigning champion Will Di Claudio, of Chippenham, was beaten to pole by arch-rival, Nick Charles, from Yate.

Then despite seeing his rival go off for oil at Tower corner, he lost out on countback to Charles, when the race was stopped after leader Laurence Kilby went off.

Norton, from Bratton, opted for a risky strategy to clinch his first title. A top 20 place would have denied his rival Felix Fisher, having qualified third fastest behind him, with young hotshot Marcus Allen on pole.

But Norton’s Spectrum slotted into third and, even on the penultimate lap, was putting his title on the line before settling for fourth behind Allen, Fisher and Saltford’s Steven Jensen.

Chippenham’s Adam Higgins took third in the A class and fifth overall in his Van Diemen RF99.

Trowbridge’s Mark Funnell, put the class C title of the circuit’s Special GT Championship out of reach and kept his overall hopes alive by winning his class.

His cause was helped by Melksham’s Simon Norris spinning his Mitsubishi Evo 3 on the first lap and then blowing his engine, giving Funnell maximum points to stay within five of championship leader Simon Tilling, who also spun away a class win in favour of Trowbridge’s Andrew Shanley, who was second behind first-time winner Manhol Allos.

In Class D, Castle Combe’s Keith Sprules was third in his Ferrari 360 Challenge.

Pewsey’s Graham Reeder, in the Ferrari 355 Challenge, was on course to win the Aston Martin Owner’s Club’s Intermarque race, before being passed by the mighty Aston V8 of Chris Scragg which started from the back of the grid.

The final encounter of the day saw Bristol’s Dan Cox take Sprules’s Ferrari 360 Challenge from pole to a fine second place in the Porsche v Ferrari race.

Rock star Chris Rea returned to the circuit and finished seventh overall in the Pirelli Ferrari Formula Classic series race, winning the lightly modified class in his roadgoing Ferrari 308 GT4