Horse racing tips: four to note on Monday

It's all things Sky Bet Ebor Festival this week and the countdown to the one of the jewels of the Flat season is almost up.

Yet the racing week in Yorkshire kicks off at Catterick on Monday and there are plenty of the usual course regulars set to turn up at the idiosyncratic circuit on ground described as soft, good to soft in places with 24 hours to go ahead of the fixture. With a mostly drying forecast ahead of racing, it's perhaps best to expect ground only just on the easy side of good.

We've picked two runners to keep on-side at the track as well as two further handicap debutants - one on all the all-weather at Lingfield and another over the jumps at Bangor for a trainer saddling his first runner at the track.

3.00 Catterick: Hooray For Hazel

Krack The Code is respected despite his wide draw, yet at a bigger price Hooray For Hazel rates as one of the less-exposed types in this fairly ordinary nursery and can strike for a yard with a good record in handicap at this course.

The Expert Eye filly ran a nice race on debut at Beverley in April, starting slowly and running green but finishing to decent effect yet didn’t back up that impression second-time out and her latest run qualified her for a mark.

Now up to six furlongs – a trip that promises to suit going by her debut effort - she represents a stable for whom the statistics speak strongly.

Richard Fahey has sent out nine winners and 10 runners-up from 61 runners in the last fortnight and the yard is 15 from 58 in two-year-old handicaps at Catterick (+£15.59, 40% place, 1.54 A/E) and has a 21% strike-rate with runners on nursery debut at this track (+£4.58, 38% place, 1.24 A/E).

4.45 Catterick: Quercus

Quercus is a standing dish at Catterick and won’t be missed here as he attempts to land his hat-trick. It’s useful that he’s done well with the draw and this front-runner looks to have things nicely in his favour as he bids to make all once again.

He has form figures of 61123222111 over course and distance and faces 11 rivals here, of whom only a few have been able to post decent efforts for the level on their latest starts.

He struck in gutsy fashion in the Class 4 bracket two starts ago before looking as good as ever last time back at this same Class 6 level, proving the sole winning horse in what has been a quiet campaign for the yard.

This career-high mark of 65 is something for Quercus to prove up to, but this higher rating doesn’t concern as a genuine burden given his current well-being in the basement grade and on ground that he won’t have any issue with.

5.10 Lingfield: Alshadhian

He looks one of the more intriguing ones here and you would think he could produce a career-best on handicap debut here for his top yard.

This opening race on the card is the sole all-weather event and the move to that surface promises to suit Alshadhian, who surely didn’t handle the heavy ground at Doncaster last time, and his sire Awtaad has better figures with his runners on synthetics (14.7%, 1.03 A/E) than turf (11.2%, 0.87 A/E) so far.

This step-up in trip also looks important given how he stayed on to the line on his seasonal return last month at Leicester. That was just his second career effort after probably being well-placed yet still showing up with credit behind the likes of King Of Steel and Nader King in a customarily decent back-end event at Nottingham last year.

Alshadhian receives weight from several of his rivals here as one of the three-year-olds in the line-up and he represents a yard and jockey in fine fettle. Combined, Ralph Beckett and Rossa Ryan are 18 from 52 since the start of last month (34.6%, +£22.33, 1.4 A/E).

5.30 Bangor: Slate Lane

He looks to have an appealing opening mark and is likely to prove very hard to beat at short odds.

He was very well-backed on stable debut at Cartmel last time and, despite being nearly carried out on the way round, ultimately won easily and showed form vastly better than that displayed in three runs under Rules for previous trainer Paul Hennessey. Slate Lane comes from a good jumps family and should be very much the type to go on progressing.

Trainer Emmet Mullins is 15 from 60 with his runners over jumps in Britain (+£34.44, 1.1 A/E) and 13 from 42 when not taking Cheltenham into accout (+£41.69, 1.13 A/E). It would be a surprise if Slate Lane didn't add to the tally.