JUNE 4, 2007

Here and there

There was a busy weekend of racing around the world. At Milwaukee the Indy Racing League teams gathered just a week after Indianapolis and Tony Kanaan gave Andretti Green Racing another victory, heading home his team mate Dario Franchitti with Chip Ganassi's Dan Wheldon third.

There was a busy weekend of racing around the world. At Milwaukee the Indy Racing League teams gathered just a week after Indianapolis and Tony Kanaan gave Andretti Green Racing another victory, heading home his team mate Dario Franchitti with Chip Ganassi's Dan Wheldon third. The race had been dominated by Penske's Helio Castroneves but with 25 laps to go he suffered a rear wing failure and crashed out. Wheldon was in the news after the race as a result of an exchange with Danica Patrick, was was less than impressed to be put on to the grass by Wheldon when she tried to pass him for fourth place. She ended up in eighth as a result. The accompanying Indy Pro Series race saw a fifth consecutive victory for Britain's Alex Lloyd. The 22-year-old scored two wins in the series last year and is unbeaten this year. One more win will give him the best ever winning record in the history of IPS.

The NASCAR teams were in action at Dover where Carl Edwards won the Busch Series event for Roush Racing. The main Nextel Cup event, however, was called off beause of bad weather.

In Greece the World Rally Championship Acropolis Rally resulted in victory for Ford's Marcus Gronholm, who increases his lead over Citroen's Sebastien Loeb. The Frenchman finished second in Greece with Petter Solberg third for Subaru.

At Le Mans the sports car teams were busy with the test day for the Le Mans 24 Hours. This resulted in the fastest time being set by the Peugeot of Sebastien Bourdais. The local hero will share his car with Stephane Sarrazin and Pedro Lamy in the 24 Hours. Second fastest was the Audi A10 of Emanuele Pirro/Frank Biela/Marco Werner, ahead of the similar car of Allan McNish/Mike Rockenfeller/Rinaldo Capello. The first non-diesel was the Pescarolo-Judd driven by Jean-Christophe Boullion/Romain Dumas/Emmanuel Collard in fourth, ahead of the second Peugeot of Jacques Villeneuve/Nicolas Minassian/Marc Gene and the third Audi, driven by Lukas Luhr/Alexandre Premat/Mattias Ekstrom.

Down at Pau the World Touring Car Championship was in action with Alain Menu winning the first race in his Chevrolet Lacetti, ahead of the SEATs of Yvan Muller and Tiago Monteiro. Int he second race BMW was dominant with Augusto Farfus and Andy Priaulx leading home Monteiro. Priaulx now leads the championship from Farfus.

And up at Snetterton there was a new winner in British Formula 3 with victory going to Ireland's Niall Breen (Carlin Motorsport), who won the first race ahead of team-mates Sam Bird and Alberto Valerio. Championship leader Marko Asmer went out with a puncture. Asmer returned to win the second race in his Hitech Racing Dallara, collecting his fifth victory in eight races.