JUNE 5, 2006

Action from around the world

Although it has been a weekend off for the Formula 1 crews there has been plenty of action over the weekend - with more races taking place on Monday as this is a holiday weekend in many countries. At Milwaukee Sebastien Bourdais stretched his winning streak in Champ Cars to nine wins in 11 races, overcoming a puncture on this occasion to beat Justin Wilson and Nelson Philippe. The victory means that Bourdais equals the record for consecutive wins that is currently shared by Al Unser Jr (1990), Alex Zanardi (1998) and Cristiano da Matta (2002). Rival Paul Tracy was taken out in an early incident with his team mate Mario Dominguez and Bruno Junqueira. Bourdais suffered a puncture soon afterwards but was able to catch up thanks to hard driving and caution flags and he regained the lead after 101 laps.

Up at Watkins Glen, Target Chip Ganassi Racing was on top in the Indy Racing League event with a win for Scott Dixon ahead of Vitor Meira (Panther Racing) in rain and fog. Ryan Briscoe, driving in place of Buddy Lazier for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing was third, the team's best result in five years.

At Dover, Delaware, the NASCAR boys were in action again with victory going to Matt Kenseth's DeWalt Ford, Roush Racing's second win in three races. Ford was also celebrating in rallying with Marcus Gronholm ending Sebastien Loeb's streak of five consecutive World Rally Championship wins with a strong performance on the Acropolis Rally.

At Le Mans the sports car teams were in action getting ready for the 24 Hours with Audi's diesel R10s being outpaced by the Pescarolo-Judd of Franck Montagny and Eric Helary. The duo will be joined for the race by Sebastien Loeb but he was rallying in Greece and so had to miss the test day. Allan McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen were second quickest for Audi. Elsewhere in France the British Formula 3 series runners were racing at Pau. Victory in the Sunday event went to Romain Grosjean of Signature Plus, who raced in the invitational class and beat the best of the British runners, on this case led by Raikkonen Robertson Racing's Mike Conway. Guillaume Moreau was third in the second Signature Plus car. Oliver Jarvis was fourth for Carlin with Charlie Kimball fifth in his Signature-Plus Dallara.