Carroll faces tough task in Britsh F3 C'ship

Portadown’s Adam Carroll, the joint leader of the British Formula 3 Championship, has a battle on his hands to stop chief rival, Nelson Angelo Piquet racing ahead in the series.

While Carroll will start tomorrow’s races from ninth and 12th on the grid, his Brazilian counterpart, Piquet claimed a pole and off pole for the two races at Oulton Park.

Clivio Piccione (Carlin Motorsport) got pole for the second race, he had an engine problem in the first session left him down in 15th.

In today’s British GT Championship race, Cork ace, Matt Griffin and his EE Sport team mate Matt Manderson finished 11th today.

They experienced problems in the qualifying session and started from 25th.

Manderson gained seven places as he lapped the Cheshire circuit in around one minute 51.1 seconds but Griffin took six seconds a lap of that time to improve to 11th even though the Vauxhall Monaro had power steering and brake problems.

Meanwhile, Derry’s Kevin Lynch and Francis Regan took their Subaru WRC to fifth place in today’s sixth Swansea Bay Rally, the sixth round of the Kumho National Rally Championship.

The event was won by Mark Perrott in his Escort WRC. He finished some 45 seconds ahead of the Hyundai of Marcus Dodd, who was a fraction of a second ahead of the Ford Focus WRC of teenager, Matthew Wilson.

Ireland’s Brendan Crealey (Mitsubishi) was eight overall.

The rally was also a counting round of the Peugeot 206 Super Cup, it was won by Stuart Jones with Dubliner Gareth MacHale finishing fifth.