MAY 16, 2005

Mika returns to winning

Mika Hakkinen scored his first win the German Touring Car Championship at the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. It was the third round of the series. The Finnish former World Champion started from pole and won by 4.2secs, ahead of 2004 DTM champion Mattias Ekstrom in an Audi with Tom Kristensen finished third.

The World Touring Car Championship was at Silverstone where Alfa Romeo driver Gabriele Tarquini won one race and Seat's Rickard Rydell won the second. Among the spectators was FIA President Max Mosley.

In Japan Satoshi Motoyama won the Formula Nippon race at Sugo, ahead of Britain's Richard Lyons and PIAA Nakajima Racing driver Takashi Kogure. The result means that Lyons leads the championship from Yuji Ide and Motoyama.

At Spa there was drama in the Formula 3 Euroseries when eight of the cars were excluded after the first race, because their diffusers were not standard sizes. This robbed Lewis Hamilton (ASM Dallara-Mercedes) of his victory, which went to his team mate Adrian Sutil instead. James Rossiter was second with rookie Guillaume Moreau (Signature Dallara-Opel) third. The others to be disqualified were Atila Abreu and Sebastian Vettel (Mucke Motorsport), Paul di Resta and Lucas di Grassi (Manor Motorsport), Richard Antinucci (Team Midland), Thomas Holzer (AM-Holzer Rennsport) and Greg Franchi (Prema Powerteam)

Fabio Carbone picked up more points with the new Signature-Opel SLC R1 chassis.

In the second race Hamilton got his revenge with a 1-2 victory with Sutil. De Grassi was third. Hamilton took the lead with a brave manouevre which put him side-by-side with his team mate in Eau Rouge but fortunately Sutil left him the space to avoid an accident. Hamilton thus leads the championship by 13 points from Sutil and Rossiter as the F3 circus heads to Monte Carlo.