MAY 3, 2004

The men to watch...

There was plenty of action over the weekend with British Formula 3 at Croft, the Euroseries at Estoril in Portugal, the European Formula 3000 series in Brno in the Czech Republic and Formula Nippon at Sugo in Japan.

It was a good weekend for Brazilian rising star Danilo Dirani who took his Carlin Motorsport Dallara to two wins at Croft, beating rising British star Jeremy Rossiter and Australian Will Davison in the first race and leading home Davison and Lucas di Grassi in the second. The results mean that Dirani is now equal on points to championship favourite Nelson Piquet Jr who had a poor weekend. The European Series races in Estoril resulted in victories for Eric Salignon (ASM Dallara-Mercedes) and his team mate Alexandre Premat. In both races Britain's Jamie Green was second in his similar car while Nicolas Lapierre of Team Signature was third on each occasion.

In Japan Northern Ireland's Richard Lyons won a double victory at Sugo, taking himself to equal first place in the Formula Nippon series. Lyons beat Yuji Tachikawa in the first races and came home ahead of Yuji Ide in the second.

And at Brno, the opening round of the Euro F3000 series in Brno went in dominant fashion to Fabrizio del Monte, who finished 15 seconds ahead of Norbert Siedler. Nicky Pastorelli was third.