JUNE 27, 2005

Who is winning where

It was a busy weekend for non-F1 racing series with rounds of the Champ Car, IRL, Formula 3 Euroseries, DTM and British F3 series all taking place, in addition to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Champ Car was in Cleveland where Paul Tracy won the race in his Forsythe Racing entry, taking the lead in the championship from Sebastien Bourdais, who finished only fifth. It was Tracy's 30th victory in Champ Car races. He led home AJ Allmendinger (Rusport), who moves up to third in the championship, and Oriol Servia, who was third for the second consecutive race with Newman Haas Racing. Tracy had to fight Portland winner Cristiano da Matta (PKV Racing) for much of the afternoon until da Matta retired after hitting Marcus Marshall as he was lapping the Australian.

Fourth place went to Alex Tagliani (Team Australia) ahead of Bourdais and Jimmy Vasser (PKV Racing) while the top 10 was completed by Justin Wilson (Rusport), Andrew Ranger (Mi-Jack Conquest), Ricardo Sperafico (Dale Coyne Racing) and Timo Glock (Rocketsports Racing). Tracy now has 128 points to Bourdais's 127 with Allmendinger third on 102 and Wilson fourth with 95. The crowd at Cleveland was 89,000.

At Richmond International Raceway in Virginia Helio Castroneves gave Team Penske its first win of the year to beat Dario Franchitti by half a second to score his seventh IRL win. There was a good performance from Red Bull Cheever Racing's Patrick Carpentier, who finished third ahead of Tomas Scheckter (Panther Racing). Series leader Dan Wheldon was fifth and increased his lead over Tony Kanaan to 83 points after seven of the 17 events. Danica Patrick was 10th.

At Oschersleben in Germany 88,000 spectators watched Gary Paffett (DaimlerChrysler Bank AMG-Mercedes) win the fifth round of the 2005 DTM beating Mattias Ekstrom's Audi and Jamie Green in his Salzgitter AMG-Mercedes). In the supporting Formula 3 Eurocup events Lucas di Grassi scored his first win in the series in the ninth round, beating the ASM Dallara-Mercedes of Adrian Sutil and Lewis Hamilton. In the second race Hamilton was back in the winning spot, finishing ahead of di Grassi and Sutil. Sutil now moves to second place in the championship ahead of James Rossiter.

The British Formula 3 circus was in action at Castle Combe where McLaren-Mercedes Formula 1 star Kimi Raikkonen's team scored its first win with driver Dan Clarke. Clarke qualified second to American Charlie Kimball but the Californian made a poor start and so Clarke took the lead after Alvaro Parente tried an ambitious move and went wide. Parente finished second with Kimball third. In the second race Parente took the lead with Kimball chasing while Clarke dropped back to sixth. Kimball chased Parente throughout the race until he suffered a high-speed tyre failure in the closing laps. The race was red-flagged with Parente winning from Danny Watts (Raikkonen Robertson Racing) and Clarke. In the championship Parente now leads Marko Asmer (Hitech) and Mike Conway (Fortec).