Ferguson drives it home.

On August 1st, Dungannon Motor Club organised the latest round of the 2026 McMillan Specialist Cars Northern Ireland Autotest Championship, and a new venue produced a great day of precision driving. Despite being the peak vacation period in the province, 22 drivers turned out to test themselves against the pylons and lines at the Transport Training Service facilities near Nutt’s Corner.

***Clerk of the Course Malcolm McQueen lays down the ground rules for the day’s competition in the “Drivers Briefing” at the start of the event.***

Clerk of the Course, Malcolm McQueen, had arranged three quite long tests, each to be attempted four times. The competitors walked and memorised the tests, and the ones with less experience watched the experts carefully to help them when it came their turn.

Steven Ferguson, from Stewartstown, is the expert everybody wants to emulate and he didn’t disappoint his fans. Already an 11-time Northern Ireland Champion, he notched up his fifth win this year at the Dungannon round, and puts himself in a good position to challenge for a twelfth title.

Things got under way with the competitors sorted into three groups and each group assigned a starting test. First to get going were the sports cars on test 2 and right away, Andrew Blair gave all his opposition a head start when his car stalled on the first change-of-direction line and wouldn’t restart. Despite this “fail” penalty (fastest time plus 20 seconds), Andrew would recover to finish runner up in the class by 24.4 seconds.

***Andrew Blair had a nightmare start to his day when the car stalled on the first line and wouldn’t restart. He still finished runner up in the class and 5th place overall on the day.***

Historically, the class for specially constructed cars has been the one from which the overall winner would come. Nowadays the gap between these cars and the ones from the other classes has narrowed considerably. Steven Ferguson set about his work on Test 1 in his trusty Mini Special, but found himself 1.9 seconds adrift of Peter Grimes after four runs at the test. Test 2 was a different story, and he turned the tables to lead Grimes by 8 seconds. Guy Foster couldn’t quite match Ferguson and Grimes, and he managed to pick up a number of pylon and line faults on his way to third place in class.

Top sports car on the day belonged to Ashley Lamont, whose relaxed but highly efficient style resulted in second place overall, just 6.6 seconds adrift of reigning champion Steven Ferguson. Not so lucky this time was young Mark Ferguson who suffered a broken gearbox in his Westfield on his fourth run at test 3 and would go no further.

***“Like Father Like Son”, Robin Lyons emulates his Dad John Lyons by mopping up yet another class win in the small saloon category.***

Running along with the “Specials” were the Mini Saloons in Class C, and Robin Lyons put in another blistering, penalty-free performance to top the class by over a minute. Runner up was Jack Lowry who picked up a “fail” on Test 2, and Andrew Carney sustained a broken drive shaft coupling on that same test and took no further part.

***Mark King is virtually unbeatable in the large saloon class in his distinctive Vauxhall Nova, and leads his class in the 2026 championship table.***

The Large Saloon Class, for cars over 11 feet long, saw only one competitor show up to challenge Mark King in his Vauxhall Nova. Liam Croston tried his best but had to settle for second place.

Much work has been done recently to bring new blood into the sport and a category described as “Clubman” encourages newcomers to start their career without having to compare times with the likes of Steven Ferguson, Ashley Lamont or Mark King. Among these competitors, John Nolan set the best score of the day to win Clubman Class C, and Andrew Weir in his “bonnet-less” Nova was placed first in Clubman Class A. The Advanced category was headed by Dungannon’s Jordan Burns, with young Harry Wilson second in his immaculate Mini Cooper.

(Full results here ==> RESULTS)