Britain has its second Asian F3 champion in as many seasons after Dillon Battistini was crowned AF3 Pacific champion in succession to James Winslow's 2006 Asian title.
The battle came down to the wire, however, and in a controversial finish to an otherwise successful weekend for Battistini, a clash with title rival Henri Karjalainen decided matters. Battistini finished the third and final race at Zhuhai in fourth place, with Moreno Soeprapto winning from Karjalainen and Robin Tato, but it was enough to give the Briton the crown.
Having switched to Aran Racing for the finale, Battistini showed little sign of still getting used to his new surroundings, soaking up race-long pressure from Karjalainen to claim the spoils in race one.
The Briton made a good start whilst Karjalainen and Soeprapto were both slow away, allowing the poleman to open out a comfortable lead after one lap. Karjalainen, however, was in no mood to be left behind and quickly closed the leader down, getting to within half a second by lap four. Despite all the Finn's efforts, however, Battistini did not put a foot wrong and the pair went onto the last lap just 0.475 of a second apart. Karjalainen had a go into turn four, but ran wide on the exit and the race was Battistini's, taking him one step closer to the crown.
Soeprapto finished third after a lonely race, with Don Tacos fourth, Tato in fifth and John O'Hara sixth - Tato having recovered from an O'Hara induced spin early on. The start saw Paul Ip break a driveshaft and William Chen stalled and was unable to re-start. Dado Pena, meanwhile, had been forced to withdraw from the event on medical advice, after a bad case of food poisoning.
Leading the title race by ten points, Battistini knew that Karjalainen had to win both races on Sunday if he was to take the championship, but the Briton drove another faultless race second time around just to make sure.
![Dillon Battistini - JA Racing [pic credit: asianf3.net/roiha]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/339328.jpg)
