Christian Jones has been confirmed as the 2004 Asian F3 champion after the rival Shell Kinetic withdrew its appeal against a penalty applied to title contender John O'Hara at round six in August.
The appeal, which arose from an incident at the Goldenport Circuit in Beijing, where O'Hara was penalised a minute for clipping the rear of Jones' car at the start of the race. The stewards considered his 'chop' to be a dangerous move and, whilst many observers considered it to be a racing incident, sympathy for the Irish driver lessened
after a similar move at the start of the final round at Batangas in December, which saw Jones' car seriously damaged and both drivers forced to retire. O'Hara was fined US$10,000 by the stewards on that occasion.
"We look forward to close competitive racing in 2005 - and hope that all competitors appreciate that dangerous moves will not be tolerated," a statement from the series organisers read.
Jones, the son of 1980
F1 world champion Alan, admitted that he was happy to see the matter settled, and to be able to get on with planning his future racing activities.
"It's great have this matter over and done with and be confirmed as the 2004 Asian F3 champion," he said, "It's a good series now and many drivers outside of Asia should consider racing in this region as John and I did! Asian F3 even sponsored both our drives at the Macau and Bahrain grands prix!"
