Tony McFadden highlights four horses who increased their Timeform rating during the Future Champions Festival at Newmarket.
Desert Flower extended her unbeaten start to four by producing one of the best performances in the Fillies' Mile since it was moved to Newmarket from Ascot in 2011.
Only Minding (121), who went on to win five Group 1s as a three-year-old including the 1000 Guineas and the Oaks, ran to a higher level than Desert Flower in a Fillies' Mile at Newmarket.
Desert Flower was sent off the 10/11 favourite on the back of her length-and-a-half victory over January in the May Hill Stakes and she showed much-improved form to confirm her superiority over that rival, beating her four lengths further than she had at Doncaster.
That emphatic success earned Desert Flower a Timeform rating of 117p which places her behind only Cheveley Park winner Lake Victoria (119p) among this season's two-year-old fillies on Timeform's figures.
French raider Topgear was well supported on his first start in Britain and he showed improved form to impressively win the Group 2 Challenge Stakes at Newmarket.
Topgear had to settle for minor honours on his first three starts for Christopher Head (previously with Fabrice Chappet) at around a mile, but he took a step forward to win the Group 3 Prix du Pin at Longchamp last month when dropped to seven furlongs and he underlined his effectiveness at that trip with a five-and-a-half-length success at Newmarket.
Only Limato, who was a decisive winner in 2017, posted a better performance in the race in the last decade than Topgear who has proved himself a very smart performer and will be a force to be reckoned with over seven furlongs. For comparison, Audience, who won the Lennox Stakes, one of the big seven-furlong races in Britain, is rated 122.
The cream rose to the top in the Darley Stakes as the unexposed Lead Artist took a step forward to get the better of the well-backed favourite Liberty Lane who, as his Cambridgeshire Handicap victory had suggested, proved at home in Group company.
Liberty Lane travelled powerfully and had every chance two furlongs out, but Lead Artist, who was asked for his effort earlier, stole a march and was always finding enough to hold on.
Lead Artist, who had been runner-up to Kinross in the Park Stakes over seven furlongs on his previous outing, saw things out well on his first attempt at nine furlongs and could be a player at the highest level next season over a mile or mile and a quarter. For context, Queen Elizabeth II Stakes favourite Charyn is rated only 1 lb higher.
The mile-and-a-quarter Zetland Stakes, the only British pattern race for two-year-olds beyond a mile, presented a much stiffer test of stamina for Starzintheireyes whose first two starts had been over seven furlongs.
However, the test of stamina, made even more of a slog by a strong pace on easy ground, was one that Leicester maiden winner Starzintheireyes relished and he improved somewhere in the region of a stone to come out on top.
He didn't match the level of last year's wide-margin Zetland winner Arabian Crown but is clearly a useful colt and his performance was similar to that of a typical winner.
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