Looking at those two, it just struck me that the top one has the pilot sitting in the middle of the engine, but you could solve that by moving the engine
behind the pilot, with the straight-through exhaust of the second one and side intakes, something like this:
Changes:
Tail unit raised and filleted to make space for jetpipe and tailwheel+hook arrangement.
Slot intakes added behind cockpit, based on original nose intake (they'd probably look like Attacker intakes).
Props moved slightly further back and new fairing added.