Dave Nevison: Wednesday racing tips for Catterick and Salisbury

1.40 Catterick: Val De Travers

He's set for a busy week and should win this on the way to attempting a rapid hat trick on Sunday.

Val De Travers was backed into even money for his first run from Mick Appleby’s yard last week and won very comfortably after going keenly throughout. He does have a penalty here as this is another apprentice race, but he looks as though he could be way better than a 0-60 horse and can give the extra weight away.

The main concern is that he may do too much in his races, but there is lots of pace here and hopefully last week’s race will have taken the freshness edge off him and he will conserve his energy better now. He should be a good thing.

4.30 Catterick: Wizard D’Amour

His ½-length second on his reappearance in a big field at Doncaster was a really good effort and if he could build on that he should beat these.

Wizard D’Amour is comparatively lightly-raced and still improving gradually with successive runs. He was beaten quite comfortably last time when third but that run at Ripon was over a mile and he weakened only in the last furlong. He looks set to do better dropped back to seven furlongs here while he is also dropped slightly in grade for this race.

Stall 9 is not the best draw to get on the lead, but there are seemingly many slow starters drawn on his inside so he should be able to travel well in this race.

7.40 Salisbury: Mr Tambourine Man

He has never been tried over this sort of trip in his few Flat runs, but this 1m6f test certainly looks more in keeping with his pedigree than those runs over seven furlongs.

Mr Tambourine Man took a while to come good for David Pipe but won very well last time out at Exeter by 12 lengths. He has a flat handicap mark of just 58 which makes him look like the second handicap ‘good thing’ of the day and he is against largely exposed horses here.

Now that both Mr Tambourine Man and David Pipe are in very good form should win this easily.