Sherburn: Speed, Sunshine & a Spitfire
August Update – Rolls-Royce Merlin & Schneider Trophies
If Wellesbourne felt like summer, Sherburn-in-Elmet certainly wasn't going to let the side down.
Perfect sunshine, fantastic visibility and another strong grid greeted us for the penultimate race weekend of the 2026 season. Sherburn has always been a favourite with the racers – a brilliant airfield, fantastic hosts and, importantly, a very good café – and once again we were made to feel incredibly welcome from the moment everyone started arriving.
This time we had an 89NM course spread across eight laps, and while it looked relatively simple on paper, there was a sting in the tail. Two huge 100+ degree turns each lap meant pilots would be working hard all weekend, pulling the aircraft around before trying to nail the rollout and immediately find the next point.
Do that eight times and there's plenty of opportunity to either gain a few seconds... or lose quite a lot of them.
Weekend Entrants
Racer # | Pilot | Navigator | Aircraft | Registration |
5 | Anthony J. Maxwell | Daniel W. Grundy | RV-6 | G-CIFL |
9 | Bob Johnson | Allen Payawal | RV-7 | G-CISZ |
15 | John D. Kelsall | Ian Scarbrough | Vans RV-7 | G-XERK |
18 | Michael Wingenroth | – | PA28-180 | G-AYAB |
22 | David Moorman | Adam Geere | Cap 10B | G-DAVM |
23 | Jonathan Willis | – | RV-6 | G-TNGO |
25 | Martin Gosling | – | Robin DR400 | G-GOSL |
67 | Tim Sharpe | – | Vans RV-3 | G-RODZ |
82 | Gordon Bellerby | David Lee | Robin DR401 | G-GORD |
111 | Neil Fleming | Catherine Ruddick | Shark 600 | G-TOPE |
There were a couple of particularly interesting additions to the Sherburn grid.
Tim Sharpe arrived in a new racing outfit with the RV-3, G-RODZ – small aeroplane, rather less small performance – while we also welcomed back Michael Wingenroth in G-AYAB. Another familiar name returning to British air racing and adding even more competition to an already strong field.
Learning the Sherburn Course
Navigation itself felt considerably easier than some of the courses we've tackled this year.
The short lap meant you could scan ahead, pick up landmarks early and start thinking about your rollout before you'd even reached the previous point.
The challenge wasn't necessarily finding the course. It was deciding how you wanted to fly it.
Scatter Points
The scatter points were thankfully much kinder to us than some previous races – we're looking at you, Wellesbourne SC4...
SC1 sat almost directly off the nose after departure. Two farm storage buildings made for an easy first reference, with the pointy-roofed building on the right becoming the one to aim for.
SC2 was pretty much straight ahead, splitting Sherburn and South Milford before pushing us left towards the power station.
SC3 was considerably more sneaky. Sitting between fields, it was difficult to identify until you were practically on top of it. Thankfully, this was one where flying slightly wider actually worked nicely – maintaining airspeed through a gentler turn and setting the aircraft up neatly for SC4.
And SC4 couldn't have been much easier.
Sitting directly in front of what looked like a new power transfer station under construction, it gave us a huge, unusual landmark in an otherwise fairly similar-looking landscape.
As we were on R28 this weekend, follow the ORANGE Line..
Those who are following along may see only 3 Scatter points here.... Well spotted! We introduced a late SC4! We moved SC4 East by 400Meters, and introduced SC4 between the previous SC2 & 3 to create a new SC3.
Overall, the scatter felt much easier to read than previous races. Likely because everything was relatively close together, you could scan the area around you and identify landmarks early, giving pilots and navigators plenty of opportunity to think about rollout and direction rather than desperately searching for the next point.
Once onto the race course though, things got more interesting.
TP1 – Find the Turbine
Entering TP1 from the scatter brought an extra challenge – traffic.
Aircraft could be arriving at the point while others were still joining from the scatter to the left, so keeping your eyes outside the cockpit was particularly important for the race. With the overtaking aircraft responsible for avoiding the aircraft ahead, anyone arriving together needed to know exactly what was happening around them.
Thankfully, finding TP1 itself couldn't have been much easier.
A very conveniently positioned wind turbine sat alongside a row of trees.
Find the turbine. Follow the trees down.... There's TP1.
Sometimes navigation really is that kind.
TP2 – Don't Lose the Hill
TP2 was another point you could actually start working on before you'd even reached TP1.
Looking over your left shoulder on the approach, you could briefly see it before a small hill swallowed it from view.
Lose sight of it and there was still a backup plan. Two villages sat beyond the point, and keeping an eye on the village to the left gave us a reliable reference to relocate the hill and bring the aircraft straight back onto TP2.
Then came TP3.
TP3 – X Marks the Spot
Every navigator appreciates a landmark that doesn't require much imagination.
TP3 delivered exactly that.
Sitting almost perfectly in the middle of two crossing roads, the tree-lined routes formed a massive X across the landscape.
X marks the spot.
Simple.
It was such a distinctive landmark that you could even see it while driving into Sherburn Airfield from the south.
Finding it was the easy bit.
What came immediately afterwards wasn't.
TP4 / AFT – The Big Turn
Leaving TP3 meant throwing the aircraft into one of the defining features of the Sherburn course – a huge turn of around 120 degrees towards TP4 and the airfield.
Thankfully, airfields are generally quite difficult to misplace.
Once through TP4/AFT, a perfect 90 degree turn brought us back towards TP1 – and once again our conveniently positioned wind turbine was already sitting there waiting for us.
Then repeat...
Eight more times!
Tight or Fast?
This is where Sherburn becomes really interesting race... Despite the short course, most competitors flew incredibly close to the optimum distance. There simply weren't many opportunities to accidentally add miles unless you went particularly wide around a corner.
But that created another question entirely:
Do you pull a tight turn and sacrifice airspeed, or go wider, keep the aircraft moving and accept the extra distance?
A tight line might save hundreds of metres, but hauling the aircraft around those 100+ degree corners bleeds energy. Go wider and the speed stays up – but now you're flying further.
Eight laps meant making that decision again and again. It wasn't really testing whether you could find your way around.
It was testing how efficiently you could fly it.
Rolls-Royce Merlin Trophy – Saturday
Saturday gave us pretty much everything you could ask for from a race day.
Blue skies. Sunshine. Great visibility. No excuses then.
Ten racers lined up for the first race of the weekend, with Race 18 leading the field away at exactly 15:00.
The handicap spread was particularly important at Sherburn.
At the front of the grid sat aircraft running around the 128–130kt mark, while lurking at the back were the RV speedsters – several capable of more than 165kts, with Racer 67's RV-3 handicapped at over 173kts.
All racers launched across the start line in just over ten minutes.
Racer 18 disappeared first.
Ten aircraft. Eight laps. Nearly a 45-knot spread in handicap speed.
Now we wait for the maths to do its thing.
Eight Laps of Chasing
With high temperatures over the weekend, the thermals were very much alive around the course - for some aircraft that proved helpful! For others... considerably less so.
The start line team kept a handwritten lap chart which tells the race story very nicely.
For the first few laps, Race 18 held the lead, with Race 82 and Race 25 following behind. Despite all the speed waiting at the back of the field, the order remained remarkably stable.
Lap 4 - Still Race 18.
Lap 5 - Still Race 18.
Lap 6 - things were starting to move.
Race 22 had climbed ahead of Race 25, while the faster aircraft at the back were beginning to arrive.
Then came Lap 7.
Race 111 suddenly appeared near the front.
Race 23 was coming.
Race 9 was coming.
Race 5 was coming.
The handicap was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
By the final lap, the order we'd watched for much of the race had been torn apart.
And Race 23 had gone from ninth at the start to first across the finish line.
That's quite a chase.
Racer 23 had left the start at 15:09:55, almost ten minutes after Racer 18 had begun racing, yet after eight laps had hunted down the entire field.
The physical order across the finish was recorded as:
23 – 9 – 5 – 22 – 18 – 82 – 25 – 67 – 15 – 111
Not quite the close finish we've seen at some races this year, but considering the hot conditions and strong thermals, there had still been plenty of movement through the field.
Of course...
Crossing the line first doesn't necessarily mean you've won... Time to plug in the GPS units.
When the GPS Has Its Say
This is where air racing gets interesting.
Once every GPS trace had been downloaded, the actual distance flown, corner cuts and speeds could all be checked.
Across the line, the faster aircraft had done exactly what we'd expected – hunted down the early starters and worked their way through the field.
But then the GPS units came out.
Racer 23 had charged from ninth on the grid to first across the line and, despite picking up a 24.91-second speed penalty, had done enough to hold onto the Rolls-Royce Merlin Trophy.
The biggest shuffle came just behind. Racer 9 had physically crossed the line in second, but the GPS speed told a rather different story – a 40.23-second speed penalty, plus another four seconds for cutting SC3, added 44.23 seconds to their result and dropped Race 9 all the way to seventh.
Racer 67 saw a similar pain, hit with a sizeable penalty pushing him too down the ranks to the lower end.
That opened the door for Racer 5, which had crossed third but flown penalty-free, to move into second, while Racer 22 – fourth across the line and also penalty-free – moved up to take third.
🥇 Race 23 - Jonathan
🥈 Race 5 - Anthony & Dan
🥉 Race 22 - David & Adam
Saturday Night – Curry & Mechanical Gremlins
With Saturday's racing complete, the crews headed out for the traditional race weekend social – this time curry night at one of the best curry houses around. Aircraft parked, food ordered and racing stories inevitably getting faster with every retelling.
Unfortunately, Racer 23's (Jonathan) evening wasn't quite as relaxing.
A mechanical issue had been discovered with G-TNGO and, despite plenty of help from the Sherburn team and fellow racers, it couldn't be resolved in time. The sensible decision was made to stand down for Sunday.
Bad news for Racer 23... GOOD news for anyone trying to claw back championship points..... Racer 22, we're looking at you!
Schneider Trophy – Sunday
Sunday morning started with something none of us were expecting.
A Spitfire.
And not just any Spitfire – AB910 treated Sherburn to a spectacular flypast immediately before our race.
There's a lovely bit of history here too. Following its wartime career, AB910 became G-AISU and was flown by Group Captain Allan Wheeler as an air racer, including an appearance in the 1953 King's Cup Air Race.
More than 70 years later, here it was flying over another British air race.
Not a bad way to start a Sunday.
The rather magnificent distraction delayed our start by around ten minutes while everyone safely taxied and lined up.
Then the mechanical gremlins struck again.
This time Racer 22 developed a problem and couldn't make the start line. With Racer 23 already out, Sunday's field dropped to eight and Racer 22 recorded its first DNS in many years.
So much for taking advantage of those championship points...
Eight Racers – Game On
At 11:10, Racer 18 kicked things off, followed just 18 seconds later by Racer 82. From there the field steadily departed until Racer 67 – our 173kt RV-3 – was unleashed almost ten minutes later.
Sunday's lap chart was considerably more lively.
Racer 18 led Lap 1 before Racer 82 moved ahead and held the position from Laps 2 through 6.
Then the faster aircraft arrived.
Racer 111 jumped from the middle of the pack to lead Lap 7, but by the final lap Racer 5 had fought its way to the front.
Across the line we saw:
5 – 111 – 15 – 9 – 25 – 67 – 82 – 18
But crossing the line first and winning an air race are two very different things.
Time to check the GPS...
The GPS Strikes Back
Sunday proved exactly why accuracy matters just as much as speed.
Race 5 had crossed first, Race 111 second and Race 15 third. But Race 5 collected more than 40 seconds of penalties, Race 111 more than 42 seconds, and Race 9 more than 44 seconds.
Once everything had been calculated, our podium changed:
🥇 Racer 15 – Schneider Trophy Winner
🥈 Racer 25
🥉 Racer 5
And despite the thermals making the finish look more spread out than we'd hoped, the numbers show just how close the racing still was.
The first five classified aircraft were covered by only 34 seconds.
Even better, Racer 5, Racer 111 and Racer 82 recorded adjusted finish times of:
11:50:54 – 11:50:56 – 11:50:56
Three aircraft. Two seconds. Nearly 87NM of racing.
That's what the handicap system is designed to do.
Unfortunately, however, for Racer 18... he was later disqualified following an infringement at the finish, while Racer 22 recorded the earlier DNS.
The Paul Walker Trophy
Of course, two races also means two opportunities to collect points – and across the whole weekend there was one more trophy up for grabs.
The Paul Walker Trophy is awarded based on the combined results across both days, rewarding the racer who put together the strongest overall weekend rather than simply one standout race.
After the points from the Rolls-Royce Merlin and Schneider Trophies were combined, Racer 5 – Anthony & Dan came out on top to take the Paul Walker Trophy.
Two days, two very different races and the most consistent performance across the weekend.
Congratulations to both – our 2026 Paul Walker Trophy winner! 🏆
Weekend Wrap
Sunshine, close racing, mechanical gremlins, big turns, plenty of penalties, a curry... and a Spitfire.
Not a bad weekend...
A huge thank you to everyone at Sherburn for making us feel so welcome, along with the officials, timekeepers, handicapper and volunteers who make these weekends possible.
And with both Racer 23 and Racer 22 sidelined on Sunday, the championship battle has suddenly become a little more interesting.
Next stop: Shobdon – 19th & 20th September
One weekend left. Two races to go.
Plenty still to play for.
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