NORTH Yorkshire racer Max Coates completed top five finishes in both rounds of racing in the MINI Challenge at his local race track Croft this weekend.

After a fifth place finish on Saturday, Coates made up some ground on Sunday and ended the race in third behind winner Isaac Smith and runner-up Max Bird.

An early crash for Lewis Brown delayed proceedings by around ten minutes with the safety car taking over but from there, Coates sprang to life passing by Ru Clark in the final two laps of the race to claim a podium finish.

The weekend’s results will have done Coates push up the drivers standings no harm as he started the weekend in sixth place. Brown’s crash means that Coates will have climbed some places in the standings. He sat one place above Coates before a Mini was driven at the start of the weekend.

Although, Bird’s runners up spot means that Coates chances of sealing the MINI Challenge title could be inching further away.

Meanwhile, Coates has outlined plans to make the step up to the elite of motor sport racing by 2023 after signing a multi-year deal with Graves Motorsport. 

He said: “What were announcing is that I’m staying with the team for the next couple of years so this is the start of a new multi-year deal with the team and during that time were going to move to British Touring cars.

“We don’t know quite when that will be yet. It depends on availability of licenses to actually enter the Championship and cars and such like.

“It’s the culmination of probably five or six years of trying to achieve this but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s something that we can now gather the momentum towards something happening hopefully in 2023 or some time soon thereafter.”