Danilo Dirani, in a Lola chassis, took victory in the first British F3 International race of 2005 in a fast and furious race at
Donington Park.
Dirani made a good start, whilst Marko Asmer alongside him on the front row was off to a poor start and caught up in incident which dropped him down to twentieth place at the end of the first lap.
Mike Conway and Dan Clarke both benefitted from Eastonian Asmer's poor getaway to lead the charge after Dirani's P1 Motorsport car.
Behind the leaders from the getaway, Tim Bridgman in the other Hitech Racing Dallara appeared to make a poor start and Suk Sandher and Salvador Duran collected the car, bringing out the saftey car.
After four laps of full course yellows, the race was back in action and Dirani and Conway stole a march on the rest of the field to disappear off into the distance for the first corner, but Double R's Dan Clarke was soon charging after them.
The restart battle was further behind as the other Double R Dallara of Bruno Senna tried to the left and to the right of Stephen Jelley's Menu Motorsports car. After a couple of laps of this, Senna showed his nose on the inside of the light blue and black car, contact was made and Jelley - who had made a great start from the grid - disappeared into the gravel backwards at Coppice.
With space to make up from the restart getaway of the leading duo, Clarke put in a couple of fastest laps as the tyres and track got up to speed, but further down the field another driver was making his own moves forwards and soon would be lowering the ultimate lap marker in this race. Ryan Lewis, who dominated the Scholarship class in 2004, was in fifth place and homing in on the Carlin car of Christian Bakkerud.
Even further back in the field, the red midst was clearly giving Marko Asmer a reason to charge and the second year Championship class runner was up to thirteenth place by lap nine and clearly had no intention of settling there, as he too placed a race fastest lap for a time.
